


your voice is pomegranate wine to me;

by tedusa



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DC Extended Universe, DCU, Harley Quinn (Cartoon 2019), Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: 90's vibes bruh, Alternate Universe - High School, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26077003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tedusa/pseuds/tedusa
Summary: a 90's high school au - after a whirlwind year that landed her in serious trouble, harley is enrolled in a new school full of rich assholes. welcome to gotham prep, where everyone is a little messed up.'With one foot in the corridor, and her mind in the clouds, Harley hit a wall. Except the wall was a person, a girl even- tall with hair like fire and the greenest eyes Harley had ever seen before. The papers the counsellor had just handed her were scattered across the floor.Harley scrambled to pick them up, and the wall, the girl, bent down to help her.“Well, that's a truly shitty way to start your first day at a new school,” said another girl who stood over them, freckle faced and dressed all in black. A boy stood with her, shoulders wide and face stern, and he managed to be drenched in even more black than his company.“Uh, you started yours as a runaway with braces, so don’t judge,” the girl with red hair smirked as she spoke, handing Harley back her papers.'
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Pamela Isley, Pamela Isley & Harleen Quinzel, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel, Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 102
Kudos: 231





	1. your school has no gymnastics team, this is a last resort

**Author's Note:**

> \- this is a 90's high school au bcs why not  
> \- expect references and a knowledge of the us that comes entirely from tv and like one friend  
> \- this is made in the pursuit of joy and stupidity  
> \- hope u all enjoy this lil intro chapter  
> \- also i have no beta reader this is gna be a mess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just a lil first chapter

* * *

Harley was sure she was about to have the worst day of her life, and well, that was really fucking saying something considering where she had just spent the summer. Half hour checks surely had to be less irritating than what she was about to endure.  
“I don’t belong here, ma,” Harley sighed, dismayed at the ugly tan brick and the expensive cars that surrounded them. Fuck, Harley missed her car.  
Her mother took a drag on her cigarette before leaning over her daughter to unlock the passenger seat door. “You belong wherever your father and I tell you you belong,” she was pulling her serious face, her top lip snarled. “Get out of the car, Harleen,”   
Harley hated being called that but she wasn’t going to risk her mother’s wrath. “They’re gonna eat me alive,”  
“Good, it’ll do ya some good,” her mother said, with a facetious smile. “Now, I love you, sweetie but close the damn door.”   
Harley kicked it shut, and regretted it immediately when a group of girls on the other side of the parking lot began to snicker and her foot began to throb. 

The counsellor barely looked at her when she walked in, head in his computer. When he finally did, he only stared at her until she sat, the fluorescent overhead light shining distractedly on his bald head.  
“Miss Quinzel,” _gross_. “Welcome to Gotham Prep,”   
The lecture didn’t take long. The ‘we are well informed on your history,’ the ‘we shall all keep a close eye on you,’ the ‘your mother told us we have permission to talk with your doctors.’ It all flew past Harley, white noise filling a white room. She nodded, and tried to smile and prune, only hoping it would release her of the torturous man quicker.   
It worked well enough that five minutes later she was leaving with a schedule, and some other shit that she had yet to look at. English, you like that, you can do that.

With one foot in the corridor, and her mind in the clouds, Harley hit a wall. Except the wall was a person, a girl even- tall with hair like fire and the greenest eyes Harley had ever seen before. The papers the counsellor had just handed her were scattered across the floor.  
Harley scrambled to pick them up, and the wall, the girl, bent down to help her.   
“Well, that's a truly shitty way to start your first day at a new school,” said another girl who stood over them, freckle faced and dressed all in black. A boy stood with her, shoulders wide and face stern, and he managed to be drenched in even more black than his company.   
“Uh, you started yours as a runaway with braces, so don’t judge,” the girl with red hair smirked as she spoke, handing Harley back her papers.  
“Ivy, babe, whenever have you ever known me to judge anybody,”   
All three of them laughed at that, and Harley tried not to get too upset that these strangers hadn’t caught her up on the joke.   
“I have to go,” Harley said and tried to move past them but the girl dressed in black stopped her gently.   
“Hold up, new girl,” said the girl in black. “You a senior?”  
“Junior,”  
“Oh, well then you’re definitely gonna have classes with one of us then,” the girl pulled the boy into her. “I’m Selina, the idiot that knocked you over is Ivy, and this is Bruce,’   
Harley knew she was just staring at them. She never had been very good at making friends.  
“Okay,” Harley said.  
“Okay?” Selina was laughing again, this time definitely at Harley. _No, not at you, don’t think that._  
“What's your name?’ Harley liked Ivy already, she liked her dungarees and her green shirt with a smiley face on it.  
“Oh, it's Harley,” she tried to smile but she knew she probably looked liked a fucking idiot. Ma once said her mania hid in her smile.   
“Well, we’ll see you around, Harley,” Ivy said, and the three of them continued down the corridor as if they had never even interacted with Harley at all. 

English was easy, with no-one even bothering to talk to Harley except the boy at the desk next to her. With a mop of dark curls, crooked smile and soft eyes, he had said his name was Johnny as he asked for a pencil. Harley offered him one from her bag but he asked for the one behind her ear. He said it looked better than the others. When a kid in front tried to talk to Harley, Johnny threw the pencil at him. Johnny was strange, it was comforting.

Everything had been quiet until lunch time, with the professors boring and the kids as entitled as Harley had expected, until lunch, when she was barraged by a group of girls as she headed to the canteen. The first girl walked as if she was leading the others into battle, and her arm stretched out to greet Harley, her weapon.  
“Hi there,” she said, a smile like a shark. “I’m Kara, and on behalf of the school’s council and cheer team, I would love to welcome you to the school,” _was that a welcome?_ “We hear you are trying out this year,”  
“It would be great to have someone new on the team who isn’t a freshman who needs moulding,” said the girl standing next to Kara, who still held out her hand. Harley didn’t want to shake but she did because that's what normal people do. “I’m Diana, by the way. This is Jess and that's Dee,”  
“Hi,” Harley managed. “Yeah,”  
Diana smiled as Kara’s faded, then she spoke. “Do you wanna sit with us for lunch?”   
She hadn’t wanted to do that either, but she did, for Ma. The girls from the hallway that morning were nowhere to be seen when Harley did enter the cafeteria, but the guy, Bruce, sat in the corner with two other boys in ugly lettermans.   
The girls weren’t awful. Kara was clever, calculated even, watching Harley’s mouth spit every word as if she could see inside of her skin. Diana was sweet, and clearly thought the sun shone out of Kara’s ass. Jessica seemed overly passionate about everything, the menu, the government, how stupid some guy called Hal looked, and she asked Harley questions like she actually cared. And well, Dinah? Dinah just looked like she was hanging out with the wrong crowd. As soon as lunch was nearly over, Harley excused herself to the bathroom and cried a little before Bio.

And Bio went by quick, the view having helped.   
Harley had sat behind the girl from that morning all lesson. The one she had smashed into like the klutz she was. Balance on the mat and nowhere else, apparently.   
_Ivy._ A pretty name for a pretty girl.   
But it wasn’t really her name, it seemed, and she had huffed at the professor when she had been addressed formally.  
_Pamela._  
Harley thought it was sweet, but she could understand if Ivy didn’t. Harleen wasn’t exactly her first choice.   
And well, Harley might not have been so occupied by the girls presence all class if the girl herself had been less interested. Yet, for every question the professor asked, Ivy had an answer. It was so unabashedly nerdy, it was kinda enamouring.   
Harley had to escape quickly once again though, at the end of class, when Ivy caught her watching, and winked. 

Cheer was a relief, for a moment. It felt good to be on a mat again, and with other people finally. Kara was a hard ass, but the Coach was harder. Kara was good too, maybe not quite as good as Diana, who seemed to be able to move in ways otherworldly, but Kara was quick, precise in every motion, and always ready to swipe any of the team a look when they missed a step.   
Everything had gone smoothly until Harley had to go solo in front of everyone. Normally, it wouldn’t have fazed her. She had practised this stupid routine for this stupid role for weeks. But when Harley sprung a triple back-flip and _whooped_ herself when she landed it smoother than any of the cheer bitches could, she could see them all stare at her like she was strange. _Everyone always thinks you're strange._ Harley could hear a girl lean into Kara’s ear and whisper ‘does she know this isn’t Russia?’ No one but Diana seemed to really notice she was there for the rest of the session.  
_At least you can tell Ma you tried._

Waiting for her mother in the parking lot gave Harley time to let the day settle, as she kicked at gravel outside the dusty brick school she had been condemned to.#. A day that had been generic and mostly terrible in every way it could have been. Mostly. _You’ve had worse days._  
“Hey, new girl,” a voice came from behind Harley making her jolt off the curb she had perched on.  
It was the girl from the hallway, the girl from Bio, her fiery hair still as perfect as it had been that morning.  
_Ivy._  
She was made of colour, all deep dark red lips and bright white teeth, a hand casually on her hip.   
Harley smiled back, trying to force down a blush. “Hey,”  
“So,” the girl who insisted her name was Ivy no matter how many times the professors had called her Pam, descended the steps towards her. “How bad was your first day?”   
“Fine, really. Well, yeah, it was-” Harley laughed. _God, you’re gonna scare her away._ “It was okay,”  
Ivy’s face had curled into that smirk again. “Definitely sounds it,” she nodded towards Harley’s bag. “Cheer?”   
“Oh, that. Yeah, I guess,” Harley sighed. “I’m a gymnast though, so don’t think it went very well. ”   
Ivy wrinkled her nose and began to reach into her own backpack. “Let's hope so, I’m sure you can find better company than that,”  
If only she knew. Harley hated that she felt so nervous. Why did she feel so nervous? Ivy began fitting a ridiculous green bike helmet over her hair.   
“You bike to school?”   
Ivy shrugged. “Someone has to. You good? Are you getting picked up?”   
“My mom’ll turn up eventually,”   
“Well, I’m off,” she said with that deadly smile still painted on her face. “but hey, if the cheer thing doesn’t work out for you, new girl, and you need somewhere to hide at lunch, come find us,” Ivy turned quickly, and headed towards the back of the school. Where was she supposed to find them? Who was ‘them’? Ivy and her gang from that morning?   
“Hey, Ivy,” Harley called after the girl just before she disappeared around a corner. “Why are you here so late?”   
“Detention,” she said, still close enough that she could keep her voice cool and collected.  
Really? “It’s the first day,”   
“I thought I would have had your approval, all things considered” Ivy said that with another wink, and Harley’s heart dropped. _Does Ivy know something? No, no, don’t be paranoid, Harley. Rule #4: Do not be paranoid._  
“Maybe,” Harley replied, unable to think of anything cohesive.   
The girl laughed a little, and Harley felt it burn into her skin, that good kind of burn. “I’ll see you around, Harley,”   
Well, perhaps the day hadn’t been entirely terrible.   



	2. no ritual animal slaughters of any kind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we going slow but we are going  
> \- thanks to everyone who has read, comment and kudos'd so far, it means more than you know

* * *

Harley didn’t let her mother open the car door on her second day as a prisoner of Gotham Prep, neither did she slam said door shut or embarrass herself in front of strangers. _Today will be better. Fuck, everyday has to be a little easier._

And it was from the start, when Diana found Harley as she entered the school, bumping their elbows together. 

“Hello, new friend,” she said with a playfulness in her voice. 

“Hi, Diana,” Harley replied, trying to smile softly. 

“So,” Diana pulled them to the side of the hallway; the bustling wave of other students continued past them. “I really wanted to check in with you after the tryouts yesterday, but you left pretty quick,”

Harley shrugged. “Sorry, it's just weird, you know?”

“Weird?” 

“Being new, not actually being that into cheer, being me,”

Diana giggled. “You’re funny, Harley. I really am glad we are friends,” 

Was that all it took? Three conversations and less than a day?

“This might be rude,” _it was definitely rude._ “but your accent- where are you from?”

“Oh, that's probably one of the least offensive ways someone has asked me a question like that, don’t worry. And Greece, thankfully”

“With the name of a Roman Goddess?”

Diana laughed again, and tapped Harley’s shoulder, her deep dark eyes smiling too. “See, funny,”

They had their first class together, US history. And Diana walked her in and filled her in on the syllabus and told her where the cheer sheet would be posted at lunch. Jessica sat with them and both girls seemed to think it was hilarious when Harley drew ugly features on the cartoon confederate soldiers in their textbook. At the end of lesson, they walked her to the noticeboard first, where they would meet her at lunch, and then dropped her off at her next class. Diana even hugged her. It was sweet and boring and for a moment, Harley appreciated being treated like she was normal. _Guess, they don’t know any better yet._

English was easy again. The professor wore a sequined dress that caught the light, as she read to them stanzas of sonnets, and Johnny played with a knife. Something about the way Johnny fiddle with the metal in his hands reminded Harley of _him_ . Johnny was cuter though, practically pre-pubescent in comparison, and so far hadn’t made her feel like he may turn the knife on her, _but still._

Seeing Ivy in physics was the highlight of the day, once again. Even better when Ivy smiled and gestured to the stool next to her when Harley entered the room. It was too early to be confirmed for certain but was Harley making friends? Diana was head girl, and on the cheer squad, it made sense she would bundle up Harley on the first few days of school. Johnny had told her a fart joke, and laughed when she corrected the teacher, and showed her his knife. But he was a weird boy though, and she was a weird girl. That too could be rationalised. Harley could see inside all of their heads. 

But Ivy, flame-kissed and nerdy and confident and cool, what did she see when she looked at Harley? Ma had said it could be different here, that Harley didn’t have to be ‘The Girl Who Did The Thing’ at Gotham Prep. _Just sit down like a fucking normal person._

“Hey, new girl,” Ivy said, her voice warm. She kicked out the stool with her foot so Harley could sit down. 

“How long am I gonna be ‘new girl’?” 

“Well, _Harley,_ it's only been a day,” the way Ivy lingered on her name made Harley’s stomach sway. _Maybe ‘new girl’ was okay._ Ivy already had three separate notebooks out on the desk in front of her. 

“So,” Harley didn’t know what to say but she wanted to say something. “Are you as into physics as you are bio then?” She felt exposed as soon as it had slipped out.

“Oh, so you _were_ watching me yesterday?” Ivy turned to look at her, loose red hair bustling down her left shoulder. 

_Fuck._ “No, I just have a radar for nerds,”

Ivy smiled, all teeth and wrinkled cheeks this time. 

“Wow, you go from making a girl feel special to insulting in the next sentence? Impressive,”

“No, no, I didn’t mean-“ Harley could feel her breath begin to hitch, and her palms grew sweaty, but calm came when Ivy placed her hand on Harley’s shoulder.

“It’s okay, new girl, I get it. Everyone here is worthy of study. All weird in their own right,” 

The professor, a short, stout man whose face was as red as the sun, entered the room. Ivy winked at Harley. 

“So _do_ you like physics?”

Ivy leaned back in the stool, posed and poised. “Yes, I guess,” Ivy was studying her, she could feel the pierce. “You’re kind of strange, Harley,”

“Oh,” Harley said, shuffling in her chair. “Sorry,”

The professor was still awkwardly writing the lesson plan on the board. 

Ivy was squinting, and even that was cute. “Don’t apologise. Strange is good,”

They spoke for the rest of the lessons, about the work, about their professor’s ugly corduroy pants, about what Ivy thought about the people in their class. Ivy’s feelings required no thesis: she thought almost everyone was trash. Harley couldn’t help holding onto every word Ivy said; she was clever, and sharp, and so fucking pretty. 

Things got weird though, when class ended and Diana came to meet her. Ivy seemed to seize up as they left the classroom, and when they reached Diana, she left fast with her eyes to the floor, throwing a ‘catch you another time, new girl’ over her shoulder. Diana seemed as she hadn’t even noticed Harley had company. Yet the tension between them was burning, Harley could feel the heat. 

When the roll call was posted, everyone who had auditioned was in, and Harley wondered why they even had to in the first place. Diana still congratulated her as if she had achieved something. The girl who made the comment to Kara at practice had approached her too, and introduced herself as Zatanna.

“I’m so excited that you’re going to be joining us, Harleen,” Her voice was silky, her dark eyes well hidden beneath her bangs. 

“Thanks, I’m hoping my keeper doesn’t activate me so I get to stay this time,”

Diana giggled, and wrapped an arm around Zatanna and Harley both. “I think you’re going to be good friends,” 

They didn’t have practice that day, and Harley didn’t see Ivy for the rest of school. She had seen Selina at lunch though, throwing fries at Bruce and another blonde kid. Diana said his name was Barry, and at one point he was showing off lights in his shoes like a little kid. It made Bruce look like his bodyguard.

When Harley saw Bruce again at the end of day, getting into a Bentley that he was driving himself, she had been tempted to ask him if Ivy was about but she didn’t. There was little chance anyway when she was accosted again, by Kara and her pack. Zatanna and Dinah were with her, and a girl in a jumpsuit with deep purple hair. 

“Harley,” Kara always walked with such determination, like she knew she was unstoppable, her hair still the blonde Harley’s had once been before she ruined it with box dye. “We are honestly so glad to have you. How has your second day been? Has Diana been looking after you?”

“Uhm, she has, I guess. Why? Did someone ask her too?”

Dinah snorted and Kara shot her a look. “No, Harley. Our Diana just does that, she likes to-“

“Mother everyone?” The girl with purple hair said, with no drop of humour. 

“Look after people, Helena,” Kara’s voice was sharp yet _Helena_ seemed unfazed, wiggling her eyebrows in her friend's direction. 

“I’m having a party this weekend, if you wanna come,” Dinah asked, her arms folded across her chest. “My dad’s out of town, so we’re gonna make the most of it,” 

_Ma would never let you._ “Yeah, maybe,”

“Well, I’m sure we can get Diana to talk you into,” Kara said, right as Harley’s mother pulled up in the minivan. 

“Johnny says he has perfected a new tab that makes you see stars,” Helena added, and Harley nodded hoping that her mother wouldn’t roll down a window.

“I’ll catch you guys tomorrow,” Harley said, getting into the car as quick as possible and telling her mother to step on it. 

  
  


“Please, Ma,”

Her mother didn’t blink. “And who is this Dinah?”

“Just a girl from cheer, and all of the squad are gonna hang out, low key,” Harley could see her the side of her mother’s mouth begin to soften. _You’ve still got it._ “Her parents will be there, and I’m- I wanna make a good impression,” for a moment, Harley was worried she had gone too far but her mother took her shoulders. 

“I know you do, darling. You can just be a bit messy,” Ma kissed her head. 

“So?

“What exactly will be happening at this party?”

“It isn’t a party, it's just cheer. You wanted me to join, please let me be _normal_ , for one night”

The word hung in the air between them like Harley had shot a bullet. It had been six months since her mother had let her spend time alone with anyone outside of the house. Not since that night. Not once she had been discharged had Ma even let her take a trip to the mall by herself. Harley could understand, for a while. But she was better now, she wouldn’t be so easily led astray with a diagnosis and three types of meds, right? _As better as you can be._

Ma sighed. “No drinking, no drugs, no going near boys, I want a call before you sleep, and you home by noon the next day. I want her parents' number, too. And I swear, Harleen, if you mess this up-“

“I won’t, Ma,” _I won’t be that stupid._ “Not like it's even really my scene. Plus, I heard Dinah’s dad is a cop, so,”

Her mother turned back to the hob, and handed Harley a towel for the dishes. “Good, because if you put your father and I through anything like you did last year, you’ll beg to be in jail, girl,”

“Ma, I wo-,”

“You better not. I’m glad you are trying to make friends, you just gotta not scare them off this time,”

Harley bit into her lip, reopening an old scar. What _they_ had gone through? Ma still refused to see it, still refused to admit that she had failed, too. Ma was no doctor, she had no idea.

Not willing to get upset after winning, Harley dried the dishes and placed them in the rack, wishing she was throwing them at her mother instead.

  
  
  
  
  



	3. i already invited them, they're seniors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- no beta readers we die like men  
> \- sorry for the delay i had a busy week

The first week of Harley’s new life had come and passed with less hassle than she had first expected, each day at Gotham Prep not unlike the one before. Most of her days at school had been spent clung to Diana, who would walk her between classes and pair off with her in practice. Harley had tried talking to Ivy in class, and it hadn’t been an entire disaster, but the girl was a ghost outside of that. Once at lunch, Harley had seen her at the back of the field with Selina and Bruce, who Helena and Dinah had dubbed ‘Morticia and Gomez.’ They both had been wearing black that day. It wasn’t hard for Harley to sense a veiled animosity between Ivy, Selina and the cheer team but she had yet to find its root.

Saturday had rolled around with speed, and Diana had arrived early to pick Harley up. In the end, it had been for the best. Diana had told her that parents liked her and she had been right. Ma had floundered at Harley’s new friend in a way she never did at Harley anymore. Ma was picking at Harley’s core with the way she invited Diana into the house with a hand on her shoulder; with her attempt to embarrass Harley by pointing at baby pictures on the wall; in the way she seemed to actually listen to what Diana, a total stranger, had to say. Pa cheered her up a little when he lent in and kissed her goodbye on the porch, slipping twenty dollars into the back pocket of her shorts. It was a small gesture of trust that Harley was sure to flake on.  
“Be safe, baby girl,” he said as he let her go.  
Ma hugged her. “Home by noon,”  
“I’ll have her delivered safely home, Mrs Quinzel, I promise,” 

The smell of sweat hit Harley hard as they entered the house, where the music was low and the voices loud. She hardly recognised anyone amongst the crowd, Diana pulling her quickly and efficiently through the masses. Everyone parting like the Red Sea for the head girl and elegant giant. How many people has Dinah invited to this damn thing? How big is this house? Every room and corridor the size of Harley’s bedroom thrice over, people were still packed to the rims. This is a cop’s house? Fuck, why are you in a cop’s house by choice? Harley could never fill a party with this many people. They couldn’t possibly all go to their school.  
Kara and her gaggle had taken charge of the kitchen, gathering around a punch bowl. Diana hugged everyone in the room when her and Harley entered.   
“The new girl came!” A boy, if you could call him that, hollered from the other side of the room. He was standing with some of the football guys who Harley had seen at lunch with Bruce. Bruce himself was nowhere to be seen, not even in the darkest corners of the kitchen. The boy yelled a ‘new giiirl’ across the room and waved enthusiastically. His arms were easily the size of Harley’s head. A younger, paler looking boy - his brother if their faces were true - stood in his shadow.  
“She has a name, Arthur! Don’t start being a turd this early in the evening,” Zatanna yelled back, and gave Harley a smile. Harley was glad to see she had graduated from being the commie.   
“Why are the fisher twins even here?” Kara asked with a dead tone.   
“Because they’re hot,” Helena replied, coming up to tickle the cheer captain from behind. Kara did not seem to be in the party mood either.  
Everything was fast in the kitchen, drinks were poured and people roared and tongues and hands began wandering. Harley sipped at half a glass of punch for as long as she could, as she was introduced to person after person she knew she would have forgotten by morning.

And it wasn’t long before Diana had decided that the living area was a dance hall, and had pushed a bunch of the stuffy looking furniture to the sides of the room. Tall and proud, Diana turned up the Whitney on the stereo and grabbed at Harley to join her.   
And Harley did join her, letting herself be reeled in, as did Kara and Zatanna and Helena with the purple hair. Diana was an elegant mess, making the few boys that were taller than her twirl her beneath their arms. Harley’s half-cup was refilled more times than she had kept track of and it made the music run through her veins, as she ran her body up against the others. 

When Johnny showed up, everything went up a notch. For green bills, he sat on the edge of an armchair, and handed out baggies. And he was making serious money, even Diana paying for what he offered. Dinah asked Harley, whispering as the music carried over them, if she was going to partake. Thanks but I have had my narcotic ‘scrip for the day. And even that I avoided. Harley just shook her head, and Dinah had her down another bowl of punch to make up for it. The beats and the boys and the bodies continued to swirl around the cream, low lit room.

Just before midnight, and on the way to the bathroom, Harley found Johnny sat on the stairs counting his earnings. He smiled when he saw her, his curls hidden beneath his hood. If he was trying to look like a dealer, he was doing a solid job.  
“Harley, hey,” he shuffled to make space for her to get by but Harley stayed where she was. The stairs looked a little daunting, or maybe she was queasy, or perhaps Johnny was the only person at the party who didn’t terrify the shit out of her.  
“Where’s the bathroom?” She asked.  
He pointed up the stairs. “Need a hand?”  
“Maybe,” she said, trying to focus on him through blurred eyes. He looked less like him at night, nowhere near as pale or feral as he always had in the darkness. “So what's your deal, pusher? Do you have any friends here?” You’re definitely drunk. You’re not supposed to be drunk.  
Luckily, he laughed. “Well, I’m at a party, aren’t I?”  
“Not a yes,” she really needed to pee and began to make her way past him.   
“Are we friends?” Johnny asked, looking a little cute.  
“People don’t wanna be friends with Harley,”  
Johnny stood up, lowering his hood and came a little closer; the bags beneath his eyes looked almost like bruises. “Yeah, me neither, that's why we should be,”  
She could feel herself swaying, the bass from the other room matching the rhythm of her heartbeat.  
“You want to be my friend?” Two whole friends? You’re on a roll.   
His smile was warm. Harley’s hands were warm. “Yeah, I think I do,”   
“”Well, I gotta pee, friend,” she saluted him lazily, weird as always, and he saluted back, before she found herself running to the bathroom.   
Johnny was gone by the time she had come back down.

Harley didn’t start feeling the real sickness, the type she had hoped wouldn’t come when she had cheeked her meds that morning, until they started playing spin the bottle like eight graders. Even then, Harley politely ignored it and let it gurgle restlessly in her stomach. Diana had kissed one of the footballers Vic, Helena had kissed Dinah, Zatanna had refused to touch anyone and Hal, another jock, had led a charge to make Kara kiss her nerdy cousin. That had been quelled pretty quickly when said nerdy cousin punched Hal in the arm and he almost cried. As Diana spun the bottle again, and they all looked like vultures at each other, Harley couldn’t help thinking about all the germs that had passed between them. And perhaps it was that image, or the way a kid called Zeus was wiggling his eyebrows in her directions, that drove the vomit from Harley’s stomach and all the measure from her mind.   
There had been no stopping it. It’s in your hair, your shoes. The world was a blur of noise and light, a chorus of ‘ew’ and ‘oh god’ and ‘what the fuck, new girl’ echoed around Harley in every direction, as she vomited for a second, third, fourth time, and half-passed out where she sat.

Big arms had come around her, and a tender hand had come to her head. Whoever had hold of her was guided upstairs and Harley was put to bed. Diana was with her, perched on the edge, that hand still coming up to her cheeks.   
“Thank you, Arthur,” Diana said looking towards the door, and then back down at Harley. “You drank too much, friend,”   
Harley’s mouth betrayed her just as her stomach had. “Shouldn’t be drinkin’ at all. Doesn’t mix with my meds,” Diana’s face dropped, her dark blurry eyes growing darker. “It’s alright,” Harley tried to reassure her. “Just makes me messy,”   
“Damn it, Harley,” Diana moved sick covered strands of blonde hair out of Harley’s face. Then she pushed away to the other side of the room. “I really think I should call your parents, I don’t want anything to-”  
“No,” Harley tried to move from the bed but her limbs were as heavy as rock. “No, please, Di-diana, they’ll fucking kill me,” and worse, and worse.  
“Harley, we’re all a mess. I can’t leave you up here,”  
“I’ll be fiiiine,”  
“You might actually die,  
“I won’t, promisssse,”  
Diana let out a sigh that almost shook the room, muttering expletives to herself as she reached for the phone on the bedside table. Even drunk, and spinning on whatever Johnny had been selling, Diana still managed to type a number from memory into the phone before Harley could roll to stop her. There was a cold silence as Diana waited for an answer.  
“Hey,” Diana said. “It’s me, please just, no do not ha- this is important, I promise. I need a favour - Harley, Harley needs a favour,” 

Arthur had reappeared to help Harley downstairs, and even after her protests, he had sat with her and Diana on the step of Dinah’s decadent house as they waited for a car to arrive. Kara, too, had appeared briefly with a heavy scowl, and she had whispered aggressively in Diana’s ear. Whatever had been said, it was Kara who stormed away with thunder in her footsteps. Harley was not drunk enough to care if she had upset the rabble of Gotham Prep, it’s Ma that needs worrying about, she’ll send you back. 

The car that pulled up was a faded yellow and noisy as Hell, and Diana jumped up quick when the engine halted. Clad in light denim, and with green eyes fixed on the head girl, Ivy stepped out of the car. Ivy. Isley. I see Ivy Isley. Harley laughed at herself and Arhur pulled a face in her direction.   
Diana had approached Ivy with determination, and took the red haired girl by the arms when Ivy had tried to step past her towards Harley. Arthur began to help her up as the two girls started speaking, and Harley’s brain was too bendy to focus on all that was being said between them.   
“It’s not … you think,”  
“Fuck …. Ridiculous, Diana,”  
“Miss... Like this,”  
“She’s new… Irresponsible… Selina, the wa… Fucking Kara”  
Arthur had plugged in Harley’s belt and booped her nose like she was a little kid. “Be safe, new girl,”   
Harley watched as Ivy stared Diana down by the driver’s side door before getting into the car with a huff. When she looked at Harley, all Harley could think about was the sick in her hair.   
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” Harley offered. “Did Diana tell you? Please don’t - you can’t take me home,”  
Ivy sighed, with a hint of an absurd smile, and tapped Harley’s thigh. “Just don’t vomit in my car, Arlecchino,”  
“Arlo what?” Harley asked.  
Ivy turned out of the extended driveway, with Hole on the radio and a smirk still on her lips. Harley was glad to be sat next to her.


	4. we are the weirdos, mister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- hello lovely wonderful people thank you to everyone who has commented or read or whatever so far  
> \- i have been busy busy busy but i am hoping to reply to all of your comments asap  
> \- your words mean immeasurable things to this insecure writer  
> \- also i don't think my formatting worked last chapter, sorry

The car ride began with a serene kind of silence. Ivy’s car was old and noisy, and Harley’s stomach still rolled in and out like the sea as she focused on the passing bright lights and blurred exterior of their shitty city. The towering skyscrapers penetrated the sky above the bay as they passed into parts of Gotham that Harley had barely visited before.

“How are you doing over there, new girl?” Ivy asked for what would be the first of many times that night.

“Mm’okay,” Harley babbled, her head rested against the cool window. “It’s not that big a deal,”

“Well, Diana seems to think it is. What meds do you take?” 

Harley didn’t want to attempt to announce them. “Uppers, downers, in-betweeners,” she rolled her head to look towards Ivy. “It’s all good, I promise. I’ve drunk on ‘em before, they just make me, like, extra wasted,” 

Ivy made a small groan. “Wasted enough that I’ll have to worry you’ll die?”

“Probably not, Don’t worry about me, Ive,” 

_ Ive.  _ The word felt good as it rolled off of Harley’s tongue.

“Wanna talk about why you can’t go home?” 

“Not really,” 

As time moved fast around them, Harley realised she must have been staring. Even with her eyes on the road, Ivy shifted in her seat.. 

“What?”

“You don’t own a car?”  _ stupid. _

“I obviously own a car,” at least Ivy was laughing a little. “Mother just prefers it if I only use it in emergencies,”

Harley’s eyes couldn’t focus in the ever changing light. The motion of the world and the girl with fire hair were too fast. “This is your mom’s car?”  _ You really better not vomit in here. _

“Mother Nature,” Ivy said with such conviction that Harley almost laughed.  _ A nerd, nerd, nerd.  _

“You’re kind of like-“ the laugh Harley had tried to suppress erupted.

“What could possibly be  _ that  _ funny?”

“You and Selina, you’re like, the school witches,” 

With a raised eyebrow, Ivy laughed, too. “I’ll take that as a compliment from a drunk fool, I suppose-“

_ You definitely should _ .

“Do Kara and Z call us witches?” Ivy continued. “Because that would be fucking ironic,”

“No, but maybe I’ll see if I can get it to catch,”

Though, the booze had settled a little but it still made Harley feel flighty and flirty.  _ You are such a messy drunk, you should stay quiet.  _

But Harley hadn’t lasted in the silence long. With the flashing lights of the city and the static noise of the speaker and the swirling stinging in her veins, she needed something else to focus on.

And, well, all she could focus on were the two girls she had most enjoyed the company of after a year of solitude, and how it had not gone unnoticed that the interaction outside of the party was the first Harley had witnessed between her kind and eccentric Greek mentor and her warm yet seductive lab partner. The alcohol was stronger than Harley’s filter.

“Why aren’t you and Diana friends anymore?”

Ivy scoffed. “A week and you’re already in it. Do you know all of our secrets, Quinzel? Or do tongues run as wild as I like to imagine they do on the cheer team,” 

If that was a gay joke, Harley couldn’t quite tell.  _ Is Ivy gay? Don’t fucking ask, Harley. Don’t fucking ask.  _

“No one has said anything about you,”  _ that was a worse thing to say.  _ “I don’t know any of the secrets,” the world grew a little less hazy with each passing second. “Just that there  _ are  _ secrets,”

“And how do you know that?”

The punch had made Harley honest enough to want to say ‘a shit-ton of therapy’, but like the sick, she held it in. “A feeling,”

Ivy continued looking out into the distance, over the road ahead, as if she was actually seeing into the past.  _ That look, that look says that you were close. _

“Diana and I-“ Harley watched as Ivy tried to mask her sigh. “We were never really friends. It's a long story, Harley. Most of which is not mine to share,”

“Oh,”

Ivy had been right. Harley was already digging deep for her first week. She had even managed to wangle her way to the cute girl’s house. Even if the circumstances were less than ideal and very much vomit stained. 

And the house was beyond what Harley would have expected. If Dinah’s house was a mansion, Ivy’s was a damn castle. A small estate, as estates go, but immodest, surrounded with pristine rose bushes and iron fences

“Woah,” Harley couldn’t help herself. The road they had pulled onto wasn’t even a road, it was Ivy’s driveway. “This is- this is a big house,”

“And all ours, lightweight,” Ivy’s voice was dull as she entered an automatic door garage that opened when they entered and revealed space for four cars.

Ivy came round the car and helped Harley out to her feet.

“Where are ya parents?” 

Ivy shrugged, and then wrapped a supporting arm around Harley, guiding her into the house

The empty house looked like something from a magazine. all sparkles and oil portraits, all white wood and racist ivory, it was the type of home a political dynasty or a diplomat might dwell in. Ivy led Harley through the home quickly; she had more grace than Diana but Harley still felt herself flashing back to earlier in the evening. 

The smell of fresh cut flowers carried through every corridor, up every staircase, they passed through. 

Ivy’s room was an entirely different planet than the rest of the house, and it hid in shadow at the back of the great house, behind a pale pink door. The light was low, on a dial, that Ivy had turned on when they entered, and the room itself was large, filled with plants from floor to wall. Plants in pots, plants on shelves, plants on the desk, plants hanging over the bed in red baskets. Any wall that could be seen, beneath the excess of leaves and foliage, had been plastered over with a magazine clipping of a protest; or a Toni Morrison quote; a Mazzy Star poster; a Greenpeace sticker. There was even an en-suite. 

The rest of the house was dead and dark but Ivy’s room was breathing loudly.

“Sorry,” Ivy said, kicking off her sneakers and sitting on the edge of the green tie dye bed. “Everything is kind of everywhere. I wasn’t really expecting company,” she patted the space next to her and Harley followed. “How are you feeling?”

_ How am I feeling?  _ “Weird, tired,”

“I’ll get you some water,” Ivy pointed with her head, sun hair tussling down her right shoulder. “Lay down,”

Harley was alone seconds later, the cool hum of Ivy’s PC the only noise, and the booze made her wander. The plants almost felt like they were watching as Harley moved across the floor, gracing her fingers, intimately and perhaps a little presumptive maybe, over the edge of Ivy’s shelves. Small trinkets, books on botany and books by Jane Austen, pin badges, tapes and cd's, all scattered around.

On the back wall of Ivy’s room, three photos were tucked into the frame above a heart shaped mirror. Harley was drawn to them as soon as she set her eyes in that direction.

The first was of Ivy, Selina, Bruce and a greying older man. Selina was putting her fingers up behind the man’s ears and Bruce was compressing a smile. The second was of Ivy and Bruce again, no Selina this time, instead they were joined by Dinah, Jessica, Barry with the light up shoes, Vic the footballer, and a younger girl with auburn hair who seemed to be in a wheelchair. Even Johnny was in the photo, hooded and hiding in the back. It was some sort of science club group shot. 

The third was the one Harley was most intrigued by. It was a Polaroid of Ivy and Diana, a year or so ago maybe, the first girl smiling boldly at the lens she was holding, the latter kissing Ivy’s pink cheeks. 

‘ _ Diana and I weren’t really even friends.’ Had that been what Ivy had said? Had that been a lie.  _ No, it hadn’t been a lie, but it was a skirted truth at best. An evasion. Her therapist had told her all about them.

Harley knew she was drunk, knew she was intrusive, knew she truly was a little crazy when she considered taking the photo and stuffing it into her bra.  _ Don’t ruin it for yourself, you shouldn’t be here. _

Ivy was back in the room only a few moments after Harley had shaken herself out of her daze and onto the bed. She carried two bananas, a glass of water and a book tucked beneath her arm. 

“Here,”

Harley sat up and took the glass, not having realised how much she had needed the water until it hit the back of her coarse throat. “Thank you, Ivy,”

Ivy smiled softly, not the sultry kind that Harley had quickly learnt to crave. “It’s just water,”

“It’s not though, not just the water,”

Taking off her jacket and throwing it onto a bucket chair, Ivy joined Harley on the bed, bananas and all. “Look, I know what it can be like to get a bit carried away, especially when Lance is involved,” she laid back, and Harley followed, her stomach still feeling a little sensitive to the movement.

“Why weren’t you there tonight?” 

Ivy watched the ceiling. “Because those guys are arseholes,”

“Even Diana?”

There was a long beat before Ivy replied. “Especially Diana,”

Harley felt bad for asking any of it. Ivy began to peel a banana, offering the other. The smell was enough to make Harley want to hurl again but she was done with self-humiliation. “No thanks, Ive,”

“This wasn’t how I envisioned us hanging out for the first time after school,” 

_ She had envisioned that?  _ “Not really how I was planning to end my first week at a new school,”

Ivy turned back to look at her, green emeralds glowing in the low light. 

“I guess there are worse ways to make friends,” she said.  _ Three friends now. _ “Hopefully you’re not a murderer,”

“Not yet, anyway,” Harley replied, sticking out her tongue. Ivy giggled, childish and endearing, and Harley wanted to capture it and hide it away so she could hear it endlessly. It was the type of giggle you had to earn and was all the more captivating for it.

Even looking at Ivy, Harley’s drunk mind took her places she no longer wanted to visit. _His laugh had been captivating too. Not endearing but maniacal,_ and yet sometimes she could still hear it. No matter how good it felt to be rid of that part of her life, of that part of herself, _his_ face always crept its way back into Harley’s shattered mind. _None of them are him. Not Ivy, not Johnny, not Diana. He can’t reach you anymore, and if he can’t reach you, you can’t be stupid enough to let him back in._

“Where do you go?” A voice broke through.

“Huh?”

Ivy’s lightly freckled face was soft. “You just,”  _ the smirk.  _ “You’re just different, Arlo,”

Harley let the pillows take her as she replied. Fully dressed which unbrushed teeth and make up still on, in a damn practical stranger’s bed -  _ your rich new friend’s bed -  _ she was ready to crash. “What does that even mean?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ivy whispered, beginning to raise her hand to Harley’s head, fingers electric. “It's a thing now. Try and sleep if you can, I’ll keep an eye on you,” 

Was Ivy checking her temperature or stroking her cheek? Either way, Harley was soothed and smitten as her eyes grew heavy, heavy, heavier than her head. 

  
  



	5. 2 4 6 8 god is good, god is straight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- can't tell if this is a slow burn or if i'm getting ahead of myself  
> \- thanks for the continued support all, enjoy xoxo  
> \- homecoming is the one that happens in fall, right?

“I’m just glad you got home safe, and honestly, I am really sorry, Harley,” Diana played with her own hair as she spoke. “Will you tell I- will you tell Pamela, that I’m sorry,”

Harley nodded. “It’s fine, I’m fine,” that was mostly true. More than anything, the weekend had reminded Harley that she couldn’t simply survive pretending that she was normal. Ivy, too, was fine. She had dropped Harley off efficiently the day after the party, and even called in the evening to check in on the house phone number she had made Harley give her. And, well, then Harley hadn’t stopped thinking about it, about her.  _ You’ve only known her a week. You’re supposed to be learning. _

“Just don’t think too badly of us. We can get a little messy at semester start,” Diana added as they reached their first class of the day. Messy was one way of describing. It was fair to say Harley had been messy herself, in ways girls like Diana might never understand, ways she’d keep secret forever. Diana was wilder than Harley had envisioned sure, but Kara had been far more boring, and Dinah far more of a natural drunk. Harley’s perceptions were pretty good, but they were far from perfect. The picture of Diana and Ivy, curled together, garnered far more space in her already overflowing mind. 

Two days of classes and chatter and cheer passed as ever, with Diana still clinging, Johnny still trying to capture Harley’s attention. They passed with lunches spent in the company of overactive football player boyfriends and Kara and Z always looking some strange way in Harley’s direction, with Ivy smirking wilfully at her over textbooks and bunsen burners as she bitched about Clinton. Gotham Prep had delivered Harley into her new routine, and Harley was efficiently bored of most of it already.

Diana was sweet, and strong, and had tried to help Harley settle. She  _ had  _ helped Harley settle.

Yet, as Harley sat with them all on Wednesday mid-morning break, as she listened to three different conversations she wasn’t part of, Harley realised she had had enough.  _ Enough of whatever that is,  _ she thought as she watched a kid called Ollie and weird Zeus play slapsies. 

More than that, Harley was quiet, insular, maybe even a little left out. Harley didn’t feel very Harley. She was supposed to be getting better but did that mean Harley needed to be silent? Would this mask of sanity even hold with all this falsity around her? It hadn’t held together very well at her first party. How many more would they want her to go to? 

Diana and Jessica had been sweet. Even Helena and Dinah were okay. Everyone else felt like they were playing some kind of game that Harley didn’t know the rules of. Yet when Hal said something dumb about a girl across the halls boobs, she let someone else call him a dick for it; then it was Harley who was false. Harley didn’t want to be part of Kara’s chorus, she didn’t want to be part of the ensemble,  _ at least not this one.  _

At lunch, Harley made a choice. 

“I have a project,” she said to Diana and Jessica as they collected her from her locker as usual. It had already become an intense ritual. “I have to work with a partner today,”

“Oh, nice,” Jessica said without any sarcasm.

“Do you need us to walk with-“

Harley didn’t want to lie more than she had to. “No, thanks, I’m good. But I’ll catch up with you at practise?”

Diana gave a half smile. “Sure, Harley, we’ll just see you later,”

With that, Harley headed to the back of the field where she had a feeling something a little more real might be waiting.

A little bump of panic rippled through Harley’s chest when she saw Ivy, Selina and their friends sat on the cold grass below a grey sun. They all looked so cool - a bit moody and unwelcoming - but still so fucking cool. Even Bruce, leaning back on his elbows, in a pair of expensive looking sunglasses. Harley might have chickened out of approaching them at all if Selina hadn’t noticed her, and once Harley had been spotted, Ivy began waving. 

As if she knew just what Harley needed, Ivy left her friends on the ground and met Harley halfway, out of their earshot.

“Hi,” Ivy said, red hair in a long plait down her shoulder, green overalls back in full force. 

Unable to contain her awkward, Harley jumped straight to the point, rummaging around in her bag. “I got you something,” Harley found the paper she had wrapped the gift in, a gift she was suddenly feeling overwhelmingly weird about giving.

“You did? Why?” Ivy’s words were more perplexed than judgemental and it took some of the weird away. 

“A thank you,” Harley answered. “For last weekend,”

Ivy pulled them a little further away from Selina’s focused and obvious gaze. “Have you had it in your bag all week?” She began to unravel the paper that Harley had tied with string

“I mean, I had some Monday but like-“ Ivy pulled the peonies, cut awkwardly from Ma’s meadow patch, out of the paper as gently as if she were handling a baby. “I had to get some fresh,”

Ivy’s face grew tender and her cheeks a little pink. “Thank you, Harley. That’s genuinely so sweet. They’re really pretty,”

“Pretty flowers for a pretty girl,”

_ Too much idiot. You’re lucky enough she didn’t think the flowers were strange. _

Ivy touched Harley’s arm. “Well, I don’t know about that, Arlo, but thank you,”

Harley smiled, pleased she had come. “You seem like you like flowers, and plants and stuff,”

“I do,” Ivy giggled, tucking the flowers into the front pouch of her overalls. “I do like plants and  _ stuff. _ So, are you joining us for another placid lunch in our pristine prison?”

Selina was nosey. She was full of questions that Harley couldn’t answer quick enough, questions she didn’t want to answer, but Ivy consistently batted her friend away. Selina was protective, too, vigilant like an animal, yet her eyes were still kind. Ivy adored her, that was pretty obvious. And Harley didn’t feel as if laser burns were left splattered on her skin when Selina looked at her like she did with Kara. Selina was just a lot, and maybe already a little jealous. Harley knew she was probably the first new friend that had come to disturb her and Ivy’s little coupling in a while. No one else in the school seemed to be able to say one nice thing about Selina, or even looked in her and Ivy’s direction. That fact alone made Harley respect them both. 

It had been harder to skirt around Selina’s questions than it had been Diana’s, about last year's schooling, about anything that had happened before she arrived at Gotham Prep. Harley had prepared for this, she had practised for all those weeks after they had released her from her cage before semester had begun. A week with the cheer gaggle and their hang-ons had simply made her complacent. 

“And your parents?”

“Boring, mostly. Ma’s a special-ed teacher, my dad’s a bookkeeper for some company,” for a moment Harley worried one of them would ask about the money, and that she might trip up on the story, but they didn’t. 

“Well then, congratulations for having the most normal parents here, it seems,” said Selina.

“Hey, Alfred is pretty normal,” Ivy said, and then the three of them - Ivy, Selina and Bruce - exchanged a look before bursting out into laughter.

“That your dad?” Harley asked, eyes on Bruce.

“Eh,” he said, his laugh descending. “Kind of, yeah”

Selina patted his thigh lightly, and moved the conversation on quickly, turning the conversation back to Harley. Her voice was a low drawl, a little sultry and sardonic. “So, Harley, anyone here you think is cute?”

Bruce snickered as he attempted to intervene. “Selina, leave her be,”

“What? I’m not trying to be rude,” Harley believed her.

Ivy poked Selina’s side. “Yeah, sorry Harley, it's her natural state,” the two girls got a little scrappy in the grass the way only two best friends could.

“Alright, alright, “ Selina said. “But I gotta know if you like boys or girls so we can vet whoever you take to Homecoming,” 

“That's the ex-cheerleader in her talking, she gets bitter,” 

_ Selina had been on the team once? _

All black clothed fury, Selina literally hissed in Ivy’s direction. “You have to go if you cheer, those are the rules - so, Harley, boys or girls?”

“Yes,” the easiest question and Harley still managed to mess it up. Selina smiled. “Uh, both, all, sorry. I’m, I had a boyfriend,”  _ you’re not supposed to tell people that.  _ “I’m bi,”

Was that the first time Harley had said that word aloud to other people? Selina was a great thief, taking things from Harley without her even noticing. Ivy gave her a heartening smile.

“You?” Harley couldn’t help herself.

“We are team players, you and I. Hopefully my company doesn't mind me telling you of their mostly mono preferences,” Selina replied confidently. 

Harley had no idea of what any of that really meant, definitely still a little overwhelmed by Ivy’s gem eyes.

“Don’t be weird, Selina. It is weeks away, anyway,”

“Trust me, Kara and Z will have everyone assigned already,

“Thank Gaia honestly that I have never been into this shit. Or boys,” the redhead said, nudging her friend one last time and coming to sit closer to Harley instead. Ivy  _ was _ too cool to be wasted on boys, at least the kind of boys Harley had suffered so far, and Ivy’s casual queerness still didn’t leave Harley feeling very confident in her chances.  _ You’re not supposed to go near anyone. You’d only be a burden anyway. Why would Ivy even like someone as unhinged as you? _

“I’m glad I have Selina,” Bruce interjected with a shrug, and kissed his girlfriend's head as she rolled her eyes smiling, pretending she didn’t totally adore him.

“Fuck, I hate that I ever introduced you two,” Ivy shot at them.

“Babe, no you don’t,” Selina replied with a wink, nestling into Bruce’s side.

Selina was nosey, but she was funny, and surprisingly quaint. And Bruce, too, was even pleasant enough, making Harley laugh more than she expected possible from a boy who before had seemed strangely standoffish. It was nice to be with people who felt a little less tangled in the drama of high school aesthetics than Diana and her friends, it was nice to finally interact with someone other than Johnny who wasn’t on the damn school council.

And then there was Ivy, truly enamouring in every way. Harley had a crush, she was woman enough to admit it.  _ Ten days? What did Dr Parze say about your damn obsessions?  _ Everything about Ivy made Harley feel like a planet revolving around her sun. The way Ivy’s hair, like a dragon’s rage, flowed down her back in waves when she unraveled it from its bands as she spoke, how she one moment she was giggling like a child and the next smirking like a succubus, how everything she said was funny and clever and sarcastic, how she was full of facts and knowledge of things no teenager had the right to know about. How Harley, for whatever reason, felt like herself in Ivy’s company. The Harley that existed before the chaos of last year, Harley before him.  _ That version of you doesn’t exist anymore. You eradicated her. _

Listening to them talk about Kara, about Z, about whatever Helena and Dinah might have going on, gave Harley a whole new perspective. Whatever had happened between Kara and Selina seemed more severe than whatever had happened between Ivy and Diana, if only a little less gay. Perhaps it had been Selina and Kara’s situation that had been the beginning of it all. Regardless, whenever Selina brought the conversation back to trashing members of Kara’s clique, Ivy tried to move it onto how awful the boys were instead, or how Barry and Vic were embarrassing themselves racing on the other side of the field. Anything that kept conversation from Diana. Harley was so intrigued it would have driven her crazy if she wasn’t already. She would ask Ivy at some point, she decided as she watched her new friends caress the grass beneath them with a unique tenderness. Ivy really was very pretty.

The rest of the school day had been dull in comparison to lunch, and cheer most of all. Ivy and Selina had walked her to English, where Johnny kept her entertained by shooting spitballs above their professors' head without anyone else noticing. And Diana had been fine at practise but she hadn’t once asked about Harley’s project in the overly enthusiastic way she had asked all days previously about every aspect of Harley’s life. There was nothing stopping Harley telling Diana that she had other friends too. Yet it felt like a strange move when there was this invisible thing hanging between her two new friends; her two new friends who wouldn’t speak to each other but wouldn’t be rude about each other either. Harley had never been very good at ignoring other people’s drama, it was always a nice distraction from her own. Diana still slapped Harley’s shoulder in encouragement when she and Jessica landed a couples double twist. 

It was after practice when she was sat on the curbside waiting for her mother’s arrival, that the final highlight of Harley’s day occurred. 

Ivy, already in her bike helmet, approached her like a damn ninja from behind, and Harley jumped out of her skin.

“Oh god, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,”

“You didn’t,” Harley lied. “Did you really have detention again?”

Ivy smirked. “Not today, Arlo, just had some lab stuff I wanted to do,”

Harley was genuinely impressed. Why anyone would stay after school if they didn’t have to, she could not comprehend. The only reason Harley was doing cheer was because it kept her out of the hospital, out of juvie, out of the path of her mother’s scathing venom. Maybe mostly because her parents had said she could go back to gym in the spring if she could keep up an extra-curricular. “What do you do in the lab?”

“Plant stuff,”

Harley raised an eyebrow. “Sounds creepy, like you’re Maleficent or something,”

“Well, Harley, you did say I was a witch remember,” they shared a laugh. “Its mostly just botany, its what I wanna do when I get out of this fucking place,”

_ Dreams are good.  _ Harley wished she still had them. 

“So, you're off home now?” Ma was beginning to pull into the parking lot as Harley spoke.

“Yeah,” Ivy looked less than happy about it. That house was so big, and so empty, even if Ivy’s parents were home with her. “Look, Diana is great and all but it was nice, today, hanging out. We should do it again. It was refreshing having something other than the Selina and Bruce’s lovefest to look at,”

Harley tried not to blush at what hadn’t even really been a compliment, as Ma pulled up a few feet behind them. “Lunch again tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow, lunch. And then maybe we should,” Ivy adjusted her helmet. “Like, hang out this weekend or something, you and me?”

Ma hit her horn. “Sorry about  _ that _ \- uh, yeah if I’m allow-,”  _ shit, don’t sound lame.  _ “We should, yeah, I’d like that, Ive”

Harley would work it out. She’d break the lock off her window if she had to. 

“You should get going, she looks upset. Tomorrow, Arlo, let Diana know you’re ours now,” 

Ivy winked and was quick to turn, just as she had been the first day of school. 

Harley, too, hurried. Ma did look pissed, and was quick to question when Harley jumped into the car.

“You’re so slow, Harleen, honestly. Just like you’re damn father. Another friend?”

Harley watched as the red and green mist of the girl disappeared around the corner. “Yeah, that's Ivy,”

“Hm,” Ma said, pulling out. “You need to bring some of these nice girls over, I like that you’re making some friends here,”

“Maybe, Ma,”

Harley couldn’t imagine why someone like Ivy would wanna hang out at their abode when she had a fucking pool. It was a toss up. If it meant they could spend some time together, if Harley’s mother would’t loosen her leash, maybe she could bite the bullet and inflict the Quinzel’s on the coolest person she had met in a long time.

  
  



	6. a brief, shining moment, and then that mouth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- sorry this took so long, its a bit messy  
> \- love and joy to you all  
> \- minor tw in this chapter for talk of self harm and domestic abuse, think you all knew it was coming tho  
> \- the title of this one is from the year 2000 i suck already, back to the 90's refs in the next chapter title i promise

Harley had managed to put Ivy off over the weekend, with some excuse about seeing her grandparents, not wanting to push it with her parents so early in the term. And Ivy, sweet and collected, didn’t seem to blink twice. A week had passed before Harley broached a trip into reality with Ivy with her Ma and Pa. A week where she spent every free moment she had at school following Ivy around, listening to the clever things that came out of her mouth and all the secrets she held on everyone. For someone that claimed she was entirely separate from the student body, it seemed Ivy knew everything about almost everyone, as if in her isolation she studied them all from afar. Getting to know Selina was harder, a little like drawing blood from a stone but Harley was sure she might have opened up a bit when she began to talk about her foster parents when Harley was still around. Slowly, Selina was pulling the curtain away from herself. Bruce was fine, too, and his general gloomy charm and absent looks were made all the more understandable when Ivy revealed what had happened to his parents. Apparently Harley was the only new student who had arrived in a while who  _ didn’t _ know about Bruce’s parents, and Selina said he’d like her on that fact alone. Harley wasn’t really sure why she would know the ins and outs of a billionaire kid’s life, even when that kid’s parents were murdered in front of him and it had apparently been national news. The fact that other new students  _ had _ mentioned it seemed far stranger.  _ Rich people are rude as fuck.  _

Diana had asked Harley to lunch once, and she had agreed. It was good to see Diana, to talk outside of the squad but Harley couldn’t shake the notion that Diana wasn’t entirely happy. As if Diana, or Diana’s subconscious, or maybe probably Diana’s friends, had decided Harley had chosen a side. Harley considered too, that she might be projecting, she tried to remember that not everything she thought was happening was actually happening. But it still made Harley feel out of sorts, as if she just didn’t mould well with the likes of Kara and Zee. At least, not the way she did with Ivy and her goths. Diana was intuitive though, never pushing Harley when she could tell she wanted to spend time somewhere else - even though she seemed dull behind the eyes when Harley would leave with her new friends. Harley wasn’t stupid, she knew it was not Harley’s friendship that Diana yearned for but instead her place. Ivy did so instantly enamour, Harley wouldn’t be surprised if Diana did still care for her.  _ And it is Ivy who keeps a picture of them both, still.  _ Harley didn’t want drama, she couldn’t afford it at Gotham Prep, so she promised herself she would try to stay out of it.  _ Once you have asked Ivy what really happened between them.  _ It was an unreachable itch. 

  
  


Ma’s foot tapped incessantly, as she watched Pa pour himself another whiskey, before planting the bottle back into its locked cupboard home. 

“She has been trying, love,” her father gave her a reassuring smile. Harley had been trying,  _ kinda _ . She was glad her father could see it.

“Well,” Ma said, looking between her husband and her daughter. “I would like to meet some of these new friends, especially these girls outside of cheer,  _ especially _ if you’re not going to be hanging out at someone’s house,” Harley imagined her mother’s face if she told her that it was the girls from cheer who she had got wasted with at the weekend, and a wayward science nerd who had come to her rescue. 

“Ma, please,”

Harley’s father remained the mediator, as always. “That sounds fair, Harleen. You trust us to meet a friend, and perhaps we can trust you to start hanging out at the mall again,” Harley rolled her eyes. “Or whatever,” 

“I mean this in the nicest way possible,”  _ hardly.  _ “But what if my new rich friends don’t want to come over? What if they ask  _ why _ my parents care so much? I can’t tell them everything-” Harley’s breath hitched; the thought of total exposure still horrified her. 

“No, Harleen, you can’t,” Ma took her shoulders and the world stilled. “But if a new friend from your new school doesn’t want to hang out just because they like you, then perhaps they aren’t going to be much of a friend,”

Harley sighed, and reached into the snack cupboard for a calming bag of chips.  _ You tried.  _

“It won’t always feel like this, baby girl,” her Pa added, finishing his drink. “Soon everything that happened will all be forgotten,” 

That was the future that Harley’s parents saw, the one they craved, the one she had taken from them in a flurry of bad decisions. Five hundred odd days of childhood still lay between Harley and escape from it all. The things she had done could never be forgotten but she could leave, remove her taint from the Quinzel name and let her parents live out their guilt in peace. 

“So, what's this friend's name?” Pa asked, ruffling Harley’s head as he crossed the room to leave, late night television calling him. 

“Oh, yeah” Harley replied. “Her name is Ivy,” 

  
  
  


“I think you’re gonna have to come to dinner at my house - if you still wanna hang out this weekend, I mean,” Harley tried her best to sound unbothered. Ivy shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t know, guess my parents just wanna check I’m not gonna be hanging around with psychopaths,”  _ another psychopath.  _

If Ivy thought there was more to it, she didn’t let on, continuing to put textbook after textbook from bag to locker. “Did you tell them my mom is on the PTA? Tell them my mom’s on the PTA, just don’t tell them that the PTA is actually a front for a bunch of rich people to meet up and get drunk,” 

“So, is that a yes?” Harley squealed a little. Maybe because Ivy had agreed and maybe because life itself felt as if it might be moving forward. 

Ivy closed her locker and gave Harley a strange look. “I mean, one time I was forced to go hunting with Diana and her aunt, it can’t be worse than that, right?” 

Harley couldn’t help but laugh at the image of the elegant Diana forcing Ivy to pick up a man-made weapon to hunt an animal. Surely Ivy wasn’t laughing that day. “I have to hear that story!” She tousled into Ivy and froze on contact. Ivy was less awkward, patting Harley’s arm the way any friend would. 

“Secrets can be traded soon enough, Arlo. Albeit not in these corridors, where people such as us might be listening,” she winked in Harley’s direction. “See you at lunch?” 

“Yeah,” said Harley like a total puppy. “See you at lunch, Ive,” 

They agreed to Friday after school, that Ivy would ride home with Harley and Ma, and then stay for dinner. 

“I’ll get Selina to pick me up, if you give her your address,” Ivy said as they queued for the only water fountain in the school that she had advised Harley to use.

“Can’t ya parents come?”

Ivy shook her head. “I’d rather they didn’t, and I’m sure they feel the same way,” 

Harley felt a whisper of guilt within her.  _ Selfish, to always focus on yourself, your own parents. Ivy has stuff, too. _ Harley knew that, her own stuff was just so damn fucking heavy. Bruce and Selina were both basically orphans and they both seemed to enjoy their home lives more than Ivy. Ivy avoided her parents, in conversation and in real life, as far as Harley could tell.  _ More to ask her about. More to know.  _

“Well, my parents can take you home, either of them, but I’d go with Ma,” Harley offered. “They won’t mine,” 

“Thanks, Harley,” Ivy put her bottle up to the spout of the fountain. “But we promised Alfred we’d continue our Michael Caine marathon with him, anyhow,” she took a drink, and then offered her bottle to Harley. “Honestly, it's cool. I’m so shitting excited to meet you mom,”

  
  


Thankfully, Ma hadn’t sung on the way home and her instant reaction to Ivy was as open as her reaction to Diana had been. Things were going fine already, yet a small panic still ate at Harley’s insides. 

Trailing behind Ma on the way to the front door, Harley pulled Ivy to the side. “Hey, um, just, if my parents seem like they are talking about things they assume you know about, just smile and wave,” Harley’s stomach shuffled but Ivy smiled, eyebrow raised as usual, practically unfazed. “I’ll fill you in after, okay?”

“Okay, Arlo. Secret sharing time has arrived. We’ll be fine,” Ivy put her arm around Harley’s shoulder and guided her into her own home. “I’m good at this, trust me,”

Harley would.  _ Fuck knows why but I do.  _

  
  


“So, Ivy, where at school did you two meet?” Pa asked, half a mouthful of broccoli. The specifically vegetarian meal Harley’s parents had prepared for their guest was some sort of combination of overcooked greens and brown rice. Harley had covered hers in hot sauce. 

“Oh, physics. We have the sciences together,” Harley tried not to smile too hard at  _ ‘the sciences’ _ , even though it was nerdy as shit. “Harley’s really good, actually,”

Ma smiled in both girls' directions. “That’s good to hear. Harleen hasn’t always enjoyed school so it's nice to see she’s trying.”

“Mm,” Ivy replied, politely and ostentatiously. “We have a project coming up soon, I think we’ll partner,” 

Harley blushed, pushing around her miserable looking food. 

“And your parents, what do they do? If you don’t mind me asking-“

“Oh, my mom is a writer, kind of, and she works with the school sometimes. My dad runs a company, the Isley company, we’re kind of Old Money,” Ma laughed at Ivy’s response even though it hadn't been a joke. 

The conversation continued on like that for all of dinner; Harley’s parents interrogating Ivy with an air of fascination. Ivy moved back on to school and away from her family pretty fast.  _ How many years since you had someone over like this? Eighth grade?  _ Harley hadn’t really introduced many of the people she had known in the past few years to her parents, and those she had were long gone. Even if Ivy never wanted to see Harley again, she was glad, in a weird way, that her parents had one night where they could pretend Harley was normal. Where they could forget for an evening that she had almost nuked the family from the inside less than a year ago. It wasn’t as all bad as she had expected.  _ He wouldn’t have been able to get past the front door without Pa threatening to shoot him. _

Despite her usually loud instincts, Harley took the backseat for the rest of the meal. Letting Ivy soothe with her words, letting Pa embarrass Harley with his stories, letting Ma smile softly in her daughter’s direction as if she was offering her an instant approval. Perhaps Ivy needed this too.  _ Perhaps that is why she likes other people’s parents, because she so hates her own. _

By the end of dinner, Ivy had both of Harley’s parents wrapped like vines around her little finger, and they were practically begging for Harley to spend some time with her. Even more so when, like the nerd she so clearly and wonderfully was, Ivy suggested they spend the day together at the museum. 

“What happened to your brother? I saw the pictures,” 

Of all the things Harley had prepared to talk about, when her and Ivy were finally alone, that wasn’t one of them. 

“It's more of a shrine. He was sick and then he died. It was a long time ago,”  _ was it?  _ Harley counted to ten slowly and took three breaths with it, the way they had taught her in the hospital.

“That's pretty shitty, Harley, I'm sorry,” Ivy said, green eyes full of queries and qualms.

“It's fine,” it wasn’t really but Harley didn’t want to go there. “I saw a photo too, the one in your bedroom,”

“You’re really caught up on this Diana thing, aren’t you?” 

Harley sighed. “Sorry, it's just, just you’re both my new friends, and I  _ know _ something happened. And neither of you will talk about it, and it's just, it's confusing,” 

Ivy’s hand came to Harley’s cheek. “You are easily overwhelmed,”

“Sorry,”

“No, no, don’t be. An observation, not a criticism. I don’t want to stress you out,”

“Honestly you don’t, I think I spend too much time in my head, in other people’s,” Harley put her own hand over Ivy’s and their fingers fell clasped onto the bed. To be safe and alone with someone beautiful was a wild thing, a thing Harley had missed.

“Diana and I dated last summer,” Ivy said. “Kind of. It didn’t exactly end well,” 

_ Do things ever?  _ “Sorry, you’re both really cool, it sucks,”

Ivy raised that eyebrow again. “We weren’t meant to be, do not worry,”

There was more to it, Harley was sure but she was happy Ivy had shared anything at all with the weird girl who stared at her in science.  _ Who is staring at her now.  _ “Whatever happened, I’m sure my last relationship was worse,”

“What did happen?” Ivy asked.

Harley swallowed. “It was bad, Ivy, like maybe you won’t want to hang out bad,”

Ivy shook her head, and swept back red hair that had fallen across her face. “I like you, Harley. We are friends, nothing you can say could change that,” Ivy smiled and, despite the nerves, Harley couldn’t help but return it. “Maybe if you were like pro-fracking, or something,”

“I’m not sure I even know what that means,” honesty felt good.

“Well then, Harleen Quinzel, tell me,”

There weren’t supposed to be tears, but there were, and they had arrived quickly. Wet and warm and unwanted, they passed down Harley’s face like acid rain. “I think I’m scared,”

Ivy shuffled closer to Harley on the bed, and the world paused around them. “Then don’t tell me, but please don’t be scared,” 

For a moment, they sat in the stillness, the sound of Harley’s hitched breaths filling empty space. There was no sane reason for Harley’s stomach to knot the way it did when she looked at Ivy, no sane reason to feel like she could trust her after such little time, yet Harley did. Harley needed to. Harley didn’t want to be lonely forever. And Harley wasn’t sane.

“Can I show you something?”

“Of course,” Ivy said, pulling back a little so Harley could move. “Anything,”

Harley stepped off the bed, took a deep breath, and lifted her shirt up to the edge of her bra.

Ivy’s face was hard to look at. “Jesus fuck, Harley. Did he do that?”

_ That’d be simple.  _ Harley looked down at her own stomach, less than an inch above her hip, at the J that was carved into her skin. “I- its a story. We, we kinda did it together,” 

In a shitty motel outside of some shitty town. He had left you, and you thought for good, so you just started doing it. When he had come back drunk at two am, to find you covered in your own blood asleep on the bed, he had woken you and finished the job with his pocket knife and told you he was proud. 

Harley ripped her shirt back down.

“Arlo,”

“It’s fine, I’m fine now,” 

“ _ Harley _ ,”

“That's why my parents are so-,” Harley bit her tongue. “It's why the new school. And, like, its, its-”

Ivy put out her hand, nails finely painted a dark red, and Harley took it, returning to sit on the bed. “Thank you for telling me,” 

Harley scoffed.  _ Thank you, Ivy, and God if she’s real and listening, that you didn’t run. _ “There is more,”  _ so much fucking more.  _ Harley’s head was beginning to ache. 

“I know, but thank you, for that,” Ivy gave her hand a squeeze, and groaned. “Selina’s going to be here in, like, twenty minutes,” 

“Wish she wasn’t,” Harley’s honesty train rolled onward. 

“Yeah,” said Ivy, only half a smile this time. “Me either,” 

  
  
  
  


“Thank you, for coming. Even if you never wanna see me again, this has done a lot for me, for them,”

Ivy smiled softly, and Harley truly felt seen. “It was kinda nice, never really do this stuff with my parents. Well, never so jovially,”

“Yeah, sorry, my parents can be a lot, especially after last year,” Harley looked down at her shoes. She didn’t want Ivy to leave, yet she also couldn’t wait for Selina to pull up and save her from humiliating herself. 

“They care, looks like. Trust me, it's not always the case,” 

“I guess,” now Harley felt bad, especially with Selina and Bruce on their way over.  _ Do you take them for granted? What would last year have looked like if they hadn’t come and found you? Where would you be now?  _ “Am I dick?”

Ivy screwed up her face and shook her head. “What? No. At least, I don’t think so, if that matters,” 

_ It matters.  _ “Are you sure?”

“Why even ask, Harley? Because we have crappy parents and yours are boring?”

“Kinda,” Harley felt small. The low sound of an expensive car began to call from the end of the long suburban street. “Why do you hate your parents?”

“They are dicks. We can talk about it properly another time,” Ivy had come so much closer, Harley hadn’t even noticed. “Arlo?” 

“Yeah,”

“Can I just give you a damn hug?” 

Harley swallowed and nodded and then let herself fall into Ivy’s arm when they came up around her, resting her head in the crook of Ivy’s neck. She smelt sweet, like flowers and fruits and friendship, things Harley had trouble recognising but she knew were all beautiful. 

A horn came from the curb, and a voice followed. “Hey, homos,” 

Ivy pulled away from the hug and threw Selina the finger. The black car she rode in was actually being driven by Bruce. 

“Thank fuck she didn’t bring her motorcycle, I guess,” Ivy pulled away, a hand coming up to adjust Harley’s beanie. “See you tomorrow, now that you’re free?”

Harley was shivering, the cold night air and the pretty girl both leaving her exposed. “Tomorrow,” she agreed with a grin. Anything with Ivy would be better than another weekend watching Dallas reruns with Pa. Better than most things.

Selina winked overtly and stuck out her tongue at Harley as Ivy headed to her ride. 


	7. can i keep you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- the great gay yearn  
> \- thanks for all ur support guys, i love you

The museum, Gotham’s Natural History Museum to be specific, seemed remarkably quiet for a Saturday. Harley enjoyed watching the few young kids wandering around with overbearing parents chasing after them. Pa had taken her to see the dinosaurs once, when Harley was younger, back when they still did things like that. 

Ivy, buried within her bomber jacket, seemed to be in her element, and that too, Harley enjoyed watching. An excited Ivy, who had made them take the bus into the city - after biking to Harley’s house - where they had each held a side of Ivy’s Walkman to their ear on the backseat. Ivy’s music was more melancholic than Harley had expected but she enjoyed hearing it anyway. A part of Ivy shared that Harley could hold onto. 

Inside the building itself, Ivy was making them stop to study everything; to discuss the kind of details Harley was beginning to learn to see in objects and art the way she did in people. They were doing the kind of boring thing adults would do, or perhaps children pretending to be adults, and Harley loved it. If going to the museum, instead of sitting at the park with a six pack, was how the likes of Ivy and Selina had fun perhaps Harley could get used to it. 

The museum was full of empty space too, large rooms and tall ceilings and bright windows. Harley liked that, as well. It was the opposite of a cage and it made her want to scream as loud as possible, to fill that space with all her many feelings.  _ How would Ivy react to that part of you? The part that enjoys sticking her head out of the car window on the highway?  _ Harley was simply glad Ivy was still around after showing her hidden things the night before. Only one thing but one thing more than she had known at school. One thing more than most anyone but Harley’s parents knew.  _ And she is still here. She invited you. _

Making Ivy laugh, the intoxicating sound of it, was worth more than anything in the whole damn museum. More than the stolen sarcophagi, more than the bones of a sabre tooth tiger, more than all the minerals of the Earth. Ivy laughed when Harley did impressions of the mammoths with their angry tusks in the fossil hall, she laughed at Harley’s ice cream covered nose when they grabbed a snack, she laughed when Harley sent French tourists in the wrong direction to the toilets. Ivy laughed the hardest, however, when Harley told her she was the prettiest thing in all of Gotham and the museum was wasted on anything else, when Harley pretended she was going to take it up with the first curator she could find, when Harley dramatically and loudly called a marble statue of Athena 'positively hideous in comparison to this city’s own Pamela Isley.’ Ivy laughed wild, like it was the best joke she had ever heard. Always kind and bright-eyed, Ivy had laughed as if it had actually been a joke. 

Harley even learnt what an ‘Arlo’ was -  _ kinda _ . She didn’t quite get it, some character or something from an old Italian play. Ivy had dragged her pretty quickly through the European Art room in the culture hall, mumbling something weird to herself about heresy. Harley had been too distracted by the get-up to read all that much when they did stop. Small sketches pinned to boards of dancing characters. Jesters, basically, but with coloured diamonds all over their bodies. Harley’s favourite character was red and black with a terrifying grin. Red and black and smiling,  _ like you. _

“See,” Ivy said, smirking. “Arlecchino. The Harlequin. The Harley Quin-zel,”

If there was anyone still in the room with them when Ivy had said that, Harley hadn’t seen them. There was only them, only Harley and Ivy.  _ Ivy, Ivy, ivy.  _ Red hair, wavy down the side of her sharp face, her lips and nose and eyes and cheeks, all aligned with precision. Pretty pale Ivy with the unrelenting gravity of a black hole.  _ She had helped you understand black holes properly, explained it in a way that made more sense than not, that first real day in physics.  _ Harley didn’t want to fall but the pull was getting harder to resist, the edge was so fucking near, drawing her closer to Ivy’s centre, and, well, no one was around to stop her.

  
  


_ “ _ This is my favourite part of the whole museum,”

Harley smiled as Ivy linked their arms together. “Saved the best for last?”

“Hell yeah,” there was a real -  _ a truly nerdy _ \- joy in her voice. Ivy pulled Harley forward into the large open hall, one long glass display cabinet down the centre, like a child running into a birthday party. “ Welcome to The Biodiversity Hall, Ms Quinzel,”

Ivy was a flower amongst flowers, and Harley felt like a seed, unrooted and unready for the world in comparison. 

“This is cool, Ive, really cool,” it wasn’t a lie, Harley thought it was wonderful. The only room she had ever seen with as close to as many plants had been Ivy’s own bedroom. Ivy didn’t have quite as many as the museum, although she was remarkably closer than any teenager ought to be.

“Come, look, this is the best part,”

Ivy pulled Harley through the room, along the glass cabinet where every type of seed the museum could get its hands on were neatly laid next to each other. She pulled them past the displays of leaves and trees and lights and toward the furthest back wall, where there against the white interior was another glass display, and Ivy smiled at it as if they were old friends. Beneath a bright light, the case held a twisted dusty root encased in an even dustier rock. 

“What is it?” Harley asked.

“Vitis, probably. Just a vine, but she’s special - no one knows how old she is,”

Harley touched the glass. “Well, did they guess?”

Ivy put her hand to the case too, and an electric heat ran through Harley’s fingers. “Paleobotanists argue, as scientists do. Some think she might be ten thousand years old, others think she may be millions,”

The last year had been the longest of Harley’s life so far. What would ten thousand or more even feel like? Even to a dead plant in stone? It made her brain ache to even think about it. “That’s old. Really old. Like, not real old,”

“Older than the pyramids, older than people,” Ivy’s voice became an echo lost in the big hall. “They came first, this is their planet,”

  
  


As mid-afternoon rolled around, and the last of the days' good sun had been spent, they had lunch on the mezzanine. Harley felt almost adult again, even with meatball juice on her shirt, but she couldn’t quite figure out how she felt about it anymore. Though, she knew she enjoyed the company.  _ Her company.  _

Ivy kept talking about school, and it was clear she didn’t really know she was doing it, moving her hands to emphasise her words. She told Harley to stick with cheer, and promised to come to the Homecoming game to watch her perform, to ‘drag’ Selina and Bruce, too. She never mentioned Diana though, and Harley tried (and failed) not to hold onto Ivy’s silence as a sign. 

After they ate, Ivy paid the bill and bought them both cocoa and Harley wondered if she had accidentally just been on her first real date. Of course Ivy had no clue, but no one other than her mom had ever bought her lunch before. Then there was the blush hyena that Ivy had brought her in the gift shop (Harley had liked his teeth), and then the walk they took in the gardens, the singing of the new fall wind around them, and how their knees had touched as they sat together on a bench - all that too made Harley wonder if this might be a date.  _ A half date?  _ She had nothing to compare it to, and no guts to ask. It wasn’t like Harley had a history of being surrounded by female friends either. Maybe this is what friends did. It wasn’t exactly hard for Harley to imagine Selina and Ivy doing what they were now. 

The good kind of silence was broken by Ivy eventually as she finished her drink. 

“Can I tell you something? I think-“ for the first time since they had met, Ivy looked genuinely worried and Harley hated it; she hated the crease in Ivy’s brow and the quiver of her lip. She hated most the thought of what might be said next “No, not think. Something I  _ should _ have told you sooner,”

Harley took Ivy’s hand and held it between both of her own. It was bold and Harley felt all the stronger and better for it. “Tell me now, Ive,”

“The PTA,” Ivy sniffled, and she looked away for the moment. “Fuck, okay, so before you came to school, my mom was hosting the whole lot of them at our house whilst my dad was out of town and they were discussing you. Well, I didn’t know it was you but,” Harley’s heart began to pound, pound, pound like a drum. “they were talking about this girl who almost went to juvie who was going to start,”

Harley stood up, she wasn’t sure why. The cardboard cup in her hand began to break between her fingers. Harley felt sick, she felt so fucking sick. “Oh,” was all that came out.

“There wa-“ Ivy’s voice faded for a while, it all faded. Harley took her breathes, felt the weight of the cup against her skin, the floor against her feet. Harley let it rule her, the beast and the panic, just for a second.

“Don’t tell me the rest,” 

“I’m sorry, Harley. I do not want to lie but I didn’t want to upset you either. To make you think you have all these eyes on you,”

_ You’ll always have eyes on you. That's why you’ll have to leave.  _ “It's fine,” Harley thought that's what she said.

“I needed you to know that I knew you existed before you, you know, existed,” Ivy reached out. “Can I?” 

Harley nodded, and Ivy brought her arm up and placed a hand on Harley’s jacket.

“Is that - on the first day, you called me ‘bad girl’ or something?”

Ivy blushed and she blushed hard, looking to her feet. “Yeah, shit, I’m sorry. You were just-,” she paused. “I was nervous, I’m really sorry,” and embarrassed. Harley could tell Ivy felt shame, and she felt it deep, and not only because of the conversation they were having.

“Okay,” Harley still felt sick. She didn’t want to hear it, hear all the things the bougie parents of white powered brats had to think of her. Still, what of  _ her,  _ what of Ivy?  _ What the fuck does she think of you? What does Ivy know?  _

Ivy stood, too. She closed the space between them once again, and as if she was inside Harley’s head, replied appropriately. “I really don’t know much. Not really. And the parents, the PTA, they have no say in who enrols, they don’t, they just like bitching,” Ivy had never seemed so unravelled, even in her natural grace. “Harley, can you accept my apology?”

Harley liked Ivy’s eyes so much, they were honest and calming, and they took some of the worry away, “Yeah, I ca- I do. 

“Good,” Ivy smiled, all teeth and no smirk. “Sometime, maybe, you can tell me the story - your story - if you like. I would like to hear it,”

Harley knew it then. Truly for the first time she let herself know it: she wanted to kiss Ivy. They hadn’t known each other long -  _ longer than you've known a lot of people before ya kissed them -  _ but Harley wanted to kiss her. She wanted to kiss Ivy so fucking much.

Harley didn’t kiss Ivy though, she wasn’t that brave. 

“Will ya stay though? Still be my friend when the story is shitty?” 

“Yes,” with a nod, Ivy took Harley’s hands in return. “I will be your friend, even if, and when, you are terrible. That is what friends do,” 

They took the bus back to Harley’s house together with the world a passing blur though the window, and Ivy’s head resting on Harley’s shoulder. Ma had opened the door before Harley had even got out the spare key she had been allowed to take out with her. _ At least she is smiling.  _

“Ah, girls, did you have a good time?” Harley’s mother reached out to hug her no matter the coming resistance. “You’re early,”

“It was lovely,” Harley replied. “We saw dead things,”

Ivy stepped up to them on the porch, hand rummaging in her jacket pocket. “We got you a present, Mrs Quinzel,” 

Ma took the gift, a key chain with a blue whale wearing glasses for some reason. It was dumb, and cute, like Ivy. Ma genuinely looked pleased, smiling largely still. “That’s so thoughtful, Ivy, Harleen, thank you,”

“I’ma take Ivy to get her bike and I’ll be in, okay?” Harley said to her mother.

“Of course, darling,” Ma put her arm on Harley’s arm gently, before watching them walk around the side of the house.

“I had a nice day, Harley,”

_ Warm _ , that was how Ivy made her feel. That was the day's descriptor. “Yeah, yeah, me too,”

“If your mom thinks we passed the test run, maybe you can pick the next one,” Ivy had already swapped out her hat for her bike helmet. “Take me somewhere fun,”

“Definitely,” Harley knew she probably sounded as excited as she actually was, and she didn’t care one bit. “You might regret asking for Harley-grade fun, though”

“Maybe  _ you _ might learn I’m pretty reckless when I want to be,”

Harley’s hands felt like spiders, trying to crawl down her sides. She felt agitated by the fact that Ivy was still standing two feet away. How was Harley supposed to be brave when she could barely even breathe?

Ivy hopped on her bike, and smirked. “Hug me, Arlo - it's what friends do,”

Harley did as she was told, leaning down and wrapping herself around Ivy, holding on longer than ever before. 

“Call me? When you’re home safe?” Harley said when she pulled away, the venom green of Ivy’s eyes as bold and entangling as the name she had given herself. 

“Of course,” Ivy said, and then she left, and Harley headed inside to sit on her bed with the cordless house phone and her new stuffed toy. 


	8. rollin' with the homies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- love you all, hope this finds u safely  
> \- i'm so excited for you all to see this story play out, hope i don't fuck it up for you  
> \- bruce wayne loves and supports queer women pass it on

Harley had been enjoying Wednesday’s cheer session until Zatanna had ruined it when she brought up Homecoming, and her and Kara had roll-called everyone at the end of practice. It was all far worse than Harley had anticipated, despite Selina’s warnings. They had all been assigned, by Kara and Zee presumably, to guys on the football team.  _ How is this your life?  _ For a moment, Harley considered sucking it up, letting her mom take pictures with Arthur’s arm around her.

Except they hadn’t given her Arthur, or even Vic. No, they had told Harley she was going with Hal fucking Jordan, and that was just not going to happen. 

“Look, Harleen, it is tradition, okay? We can’t mess around with the tradition. We draw lots and this is yours,” Kara said, barely even looking at Harley as she addressed her.  _ Bullshit.  _

“I don’t want to go with, Ollie, either - if anyone cares,” Dinah piped in from across the gym. 

“Tradition is bullshit,” Harley didn’t care that Zee looked genuinely offended, or that the coach was potentially in earshot. “And I have someone I want to go with,” 

“You just can’t,” Zee huffed. “It is  _ tradition, _ and an organisational catastrophe, _ ”  _

Diana hadn’t said anything yet but she had come to stand by Harley’s side. “But it isn’t the rule, right? Like, a school rule?” Harley asked.

They all stared at her like startled owls. 

“Well, no,” Diana said. “You can’t force a girl to go to Homecoming with someone she doesn’t want to, it's a little nineteen-fifties,” 

Harley took the time to stare in return. “Then thank you very much but I have someone else I’m asking to the dance, okay? I’ll do the rest of your little rituals but I’m asking someone else,” 

“But who though?” Kara said, hand on the hip of her red and blue uniform. “Who do you wanna bring?”

Harley tried with all her might to keep her eyes off of Diana. “I’ll tell ya, if they say yes,” 

Zee went to say something but Kara got there first. “Fine,” she looked sharply at Diana. “Any fuck ups and you can deal with it, Prince,”

Diana was definitely muttering an ‘as always’ as Harley confidently removed herself from the conversation. 

  
  


At Thursday lunch, Ivy invited Harley to hang out at Bruce’s that Friday after school. They sat, just the two of them, eating sandwiches on the bleachers. Ivy liked it best outside so Harley had kept her company when Selina had complained of the cold and dragged Bruce into the canteen. There hadn’t been many of the elite of Gotham Prep that seemed to wanna embrace the beginning of the fall. Only a few people were around, most of them out on the field throwing about a ball, as Johnny and his strange friends watched from the backside of the lot. Johnny had waved at them as they walked by, and Ivy had rolled her eyes with a smile. Harley enjoyed this part of the year the best, when the world was on fire for a little while, and only the best people seemed to know how to enjoy it. 

“Alfred is going to see an old lady friend all weekend - I think she’s sick - and well, he doesn’t like leaving Bruce alone. I don't think Bruce really likes being alone either, not in that house, anyway,” Ivy said around a mouthful of lettuce. 

“Will he be alright with me coming?” Harley genuinely wondered.

Ivy pulled a face. “Of course, I promise Selina and Bruce actually like you, trust me - besides I’m Bruce’s oldest friend, he couldn’t say no to me even if he wanted to. And look, you don’t have to stay if your parents are not going to be okay about it, but you definitely should, Arlo. Alfred is making Kate come over, and that's always fun,” 

Listening to Ivy say another girl's name with that level of enthusiasm made Harley’s chest tighten.  _ Don’t be possessive _ , she tried to remind herself _. Don’t be like him.  _ “Who is Kate?” 

“Oh, Bruce’s cousin, total fucking military weirdo but she’s also pretty cool considering. We’ve been friends a long time, Kate, Bruce and I. Since we were little,” 

“Your parents were friends with Bruce’s?”

“Yeah, Martha and mom were really close,” Ivy said, her voice low but only for a moment. “Look, ask, please, we’ll eat so much pizza,” 

Harley smiled and Ivy returned it. “Another weekend together, Ive, I’m starting to think you actually like having me around,”

Ivy elbowed her gently. “Oh, I would say so, yes,” 

For a brief moment, as they enjoyed lunch together above the school field, Harley thought about bringing up the dance.  _ One deep breath and you just ask.  _ The moment was too good, though, Harley didn't want to ruin it so she pocketed the thought for later. 

Ma had been remarkably easy to convince in the car road home. She clearly liked Ivy, at least enough to trust her more than Harley it seemed, and well, once Harley had mentioned poor sad billionaire Brucie in his mansion all alone, she had practically begged Harley to go. Ma even rescheduled her daughters Friday therapy for Monday, and Harley was so manic with excitement that she vacuumed the entire house. That had gone down well with her mother, too.

  
  


They drove to Bruce’s together after school, with the goth squad up front, and Ivy and Harley knee to knee in the back. Harley had never rode inside a car so ridiculous, a car that was probably more expensive than her parents house. Selina’s music was kind of terrible too, Bruce’s driving studious and the ride long. It was the small part of Harley’s skin that brushed against the girl sitting next to her made it all feel like a worthwhile venture. 

Bruce’s home was not a manor, like he had insisted it would be, it was a fucking castle. If someone had told Harley that they had accidentally and magically transported to the British countryside on the car ride over, she would have believed them. Wayne Manor had a moat, there was even a ficking bridge.

They pulled up outside, past a fountain beneath a stone archway and Harley really couldn’t fathom being so rich she’d leave a car that expensive just out on the damn lawn. Ivy linked their arms together as they walked through a courtyard and up a small set of stone stairs to a huge dark door. “I wish you could have been here to see Selina’s face when she first came to the manor, Harls,” Ivy whispered. Selina heard regardless, ears unlike any other, and turned around to flip off her friend.

“It was funny, babe” Bruce added as he unlocked the door with a pager looking device instead of a key.

Wayne Manor was gothic above all things. Gloomy and badly lit, the opposite of Ivy's show home, although still scattered in ugly portraits and inherited drapes. As they headed through the wood red building, Harley burst out laughing when she realised it had wings, and laughed even harder when she saw a suit of armour. Ivy seemed to think it was pretty funny too, giggling beside her. 

They headed straight to Bruce’s room, which was actually three rooms, and was barely identifiable as the bedroom of a teenage boy. Which, the more Harley thought about it, was actually very Bruce. There was the room with the bed, a four poster bed with a canopy, that led onto a second room through an archway, that held, amongst other rich things, a fireplace and two sofas and a breakfast table.  _ Ridiculous. Fancy, sexy and ridiculous.  _ The third room was a bathroom, off to the side Bruce’s bedroom, and far more modern than the rest. 

Ivy and Selina both kicked off their shoes on entry, and although Harley wasn’t sure if they were doing it out of courtesy or comfort, she followed their lead. Bruce had crossed into the living area and was playing with a record player, jazz coming from it not long after. The boy was bougie, and kinda weird, but Harley thought it was the type of weird she could be friends with. Selina had taken one sofa and stretched dramatically across it, and Ivy had pulled Harley to the other. The rug looked pretty comfy too, Selina and Bruce had definitely fucked on it, Harley just knew it. 

“Right,” said Selina. “Someone roll please,” she fluttered her dark eyes in Ivy’s direction. “Pretty please,”

_ Oh, that makes sense.  _ Ivy rolled her eyes and reached into a drawer next to the sofa, pulling out a small metal tin. “Shit, I forgot to say. Is this okay, Harley?” Ivy asked, looking a little embarrassed for some strange reason. 

“I’m not a kid, Ive,”  _ weed is basically water, at this point.  _ “It’s honestly fine,”

Ivy smiled. “Just checking, okay? I can open a window,” 

Selina was snickering at them from the other sofa. “Stop being such a gentleman and fucking roll, Pamela, I need it,” 

“Kitty, I swear to fuck,” Ivy threw a cushion at her friend, and Selina, in turn and with a giggle, threw it to Bruce as he came to sit with her. 

“You think they’re cute, Bruce? I think they’re cute,” Selina asked.

Bruce smiled at Harley, as Ivy focused on her joint and ignored them with a pout. “Don’t think they want to hear what I have to think,”

Ivy chuckled, looking up. “And you would be correct. A repeat of last time is best avoided,”

Selina sat up. “Last time was different,” 

“I know,”

“And  _ Harley _ is different,”

“Thank fuck,” Ivy stuck her freshly, and remarkably quickly, rolled joint between her perfect lips and lit it. “And I don’t regret the choice, I just don’t want either of us to have to be in that situation again,”

Bruce winked at Harley, and she felt tethered. He must spend hours in his own silence, sometimes, listening to Ivy and Selina go. 

“What happened last time?” Harley couldn’t help it. 

Ivy touched Harley’s shoulder. “Oh, I’ll tell you, I promise, I’ve just got to be high as piss to reopen those wounds,”

They sat for a while, smoking and talking and listening to Bruce’s records. Harley only had two puffs, with Ivy’s worried eyes on her, yet it had softened the edges of the room and the smell brought back memories of the end of middle school, of a time when Harley felt dramatic and invincible and yet cracked. Harley felt safe in the company she had chosen, even though Ivy’s world was slower than she was used to, she was ready to find something in the strange peace these rich and likeable weirdos had going for them. Close to an hour, according to the grandfather clock Bruce owned, had passed, of Ivy humming old songs as Harley watched her like a stage show, of Bruce and Selina whispering together on the other side of the room, before the house rang with the sound of the doorbell. 

“That’ll be Kate,” 

“Is Renee coming? Or is it Maggie again?” Ivy asked with a smirk.

“Neither, last I heard,” Bruce replied with a small laugh, as he lifted his girlfriend out of his lap and headed out of his room.

Kate Kane, it turned out, was quite the stud. She was pretty, with short hair framing a face scarily similar to Bruce’s, only a little less stern, and clothes just as bleak. Her colouring, her hair and her eyes, was similar to Ivy, yet not half as entrancing. Most noticeably, Kate carried herself like she was ready to punch a dude at any second, Harley could appreciate that. She had carried herself like that once,  _ and maybe you will again.  _ Kate had bundled into the room and hugged Ivy first, coming to sit next to them both. She even kissed Ivy’s head, and called her ‘doll face’ like a mobster or some fuckery. Harley appreciated that much less. 

“So, who is going to introduce me?” Kate said when she had finally settled down with her friends.

Harley wasn’t great with cues, but she saw that one. “I’m Harley,” she said. “Ivy’s friend,”

Kate wiggled her brow, and her short hair seemed to dance with the movement. “My flower has a friend,”  _ is Ivy blushing?  _ “Better than the last one?” Kate had turned to Selina.

“Definitely,” she said softly, before adding. “Better for  _ our flower _ ,” The goth’s, no longer twins but triplets, broke out in a friendly laughter. It was nice that their jokes couldn’t hide how much they cared for their friend.

Ivy rolled her eyes again and mouthed an ‘ignore them’ in Harley’s direction. There was no doubt that Harley was glad that Selina liked her more than Diana, that Ivy’s friends could see Harley, even in banter, next to Ivy like that.  _ But had Diana been that bad though? Stoic and stubborn but ultimately sweet Diana.  _ Harley had no need to be entangled between them, not when Ivy was telling her to stick out cheer.  _ Too many cues now, it's getting confusing. _

For a while, they enjoyed each other's company the way rich kids did - by pretending they weren’t that rich at all. They passed around a few more joints, and the goths drank beer and the old friends all exchanged inside jokes and stories. They didn’t exclude Harley but she wasn’t there with them, she was with Ivy. Their bodies were close on the sofa, closer than they had been before Kate’s arrival, and it was there where Harley’s focus was drawn. 

As darkness began to encase them, Bruce started the fire, like they were in a cabin not a mansion. 

“Right, I’m going to go order pizza,” Kate announced, who knows how much time later. 

Harley  _ was _ starving.

“Shit, please,” Ivy agreed. 

There was a barrage of food orders from all sides of the room.

“Fuck, okay, I’ll order what I order and you’ll like it,” Kate put her foot down as she stood in the doorway, waving her hands. “Oh, and we’re playing high-and-seek whilst we wait, losers,” then she disappeared into the shadows.

Harley looked at her new friends. “Whats high-and-seek?”

“A childish game, Arlo, ignore the sergeant,”

Selina had moved to stretch like a cat near the fire.  _ Definitely the fuck rug.  _ “A game these idiots played when they were middle schoolers. They made me do it. You hide in the house - high, obviously - and well, you get it, Harley, its hide-or-seek,”

Wayne Manor seemed like the best and worst place for that type of game. Harley thought it would be kinda funny, kinda creepy, kinda not terrible to hide away with Ivy for a while. 

“Well this house is definitely haunted, and it is almost Halloween,” Harley said, and when they all laughed her heart grew a little. 

”Don’t worry,” Ivy said with a confident smirk, and a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “Kate can’t make us play,”

There was no space between them in the closet.  _ A truly ironic place to be.  _ There was little light, either. A small crack between the doors and nothing else. Their legs were tangled together in one large mass, and Ivy had hold of Harley’s arm.

Ivy had only put up a mild fight against the game when they had all batted their eyelids. Harley wanted to think it was her delicately muttered ‘it could be fun, pretty girl,’ though she couldn’t be sure. They weren’t supposed to hide as a pair, yet Ivy had dragged Harley away through the wings of Wayne Manor with no fucks given about what her friends thought.

“We could be here for hours, you know,” Ivy whispered, her breath warm near Harley’s face.

“And what would we do in a closet for hours?”  _ You're a truly terrible flirt.  _

“You’re the fun one, Harley. You tell me,”  _ Am I?  _ Ivy moved her hand to Harley’s and wrapped their fingers together much like their legs. 

As much as Harley willed it, she couldn’t think of anything cute or flirtatious to say. She couldn’t quite breathe now that they held hands. “Why do you like me, Ive? Why do you want to be my friend?” 

“Because you’re like me, I guess, but funnier, nicer to look at,”  _ who is she kidding?  _ “And, well, I like the way you think, when you let me see it,”

“Did you prepare that?” Harley said, trying to defuse the tension she had created.

“Don’t be silly, Harley. Or do, maybe, just not like that,” Ivy sighed. “There is something about you where, I don’t know, what do you want me to say?”

“Tell me why you want me around, Ivy,”

“You’ll think I’m a witch again,” Ivy whispered through a halfhearted laugh. “My scientist credentials will take a hit,” 

“ _ Tell meeeeeeeeeee,” _ Harley hissed, coming as close as she could to her friend without creating any more contact between them. 

“It’s just, I guess it feels like I have always known you somehow. Have you ever had that before? It sounds so fucking ridiculous, I don’t even believe this crap but, shit, it feels like maybe somewhere, some time, we’ve already met. Sorry, I’m so weird, this is weird,”

“Yeah, that's pretty witchy,” Harley replied, ignoring the rest. “But also kinda sweet,” 

“Maybe I’m just sad and gay,”

Harley laughed. “Oh, for sure. Sweet, as well though,”  _ sweeter than you deserve.  _ “I feel something like that too, with you, like gravity, or something”

“Maybe you’re sad and gay, too,”

They both laughed, and only stopped when a creak came from the spare bedroom. Nothing came of the noise but they quieted down nonetheless. 

“I thought you guys would be too cool for stuff like this,”

“High and seek is dumb, we’re honestly fools when you get too close,”

_ Damn. You’re a sucker for fools. _ “So, you and Kate?” Harley asked, awkward words spilling out of an awkward girl.

“Wha-no, oh God, no Harley,” Ivy scoffed and laughed simultaneously. 

_ Not just paranoid and desperate but also wrong, well done.  _ “Oh, I just thought,”

“Kate is my friend, and well, we came out around a similar time, and our dads are both dicks. We have simil-“ Ivy sighed and shook herself to composure the way Harley had noticed she did when she was rambling, when Ivy’s brain seemed to be running away from her. “Friends, we are just friends,”

Harley wished she was strong enough to end the torture, to do what she so badly wanted to.  _ Are we just friends? Do you tell all your friends you knew them in a past life? What if we…  _

Instead of embracing the chaos that was so easily released, the chaos that crawled beneath her skin and ate her insides, Harley let her sanity get the better of her. Instead of just fucking kissing Ivy like she wanted to, Harley smiled beneath the dark, and emptied the pocket she had packed up earlier in the week. 

“What are you doing for Homecoming?”

“Well,” Ivy said. “Coming to watch the game like I promised, and then I’m going to go get drunk with Selina somewhere and disappoint my mother,”

Harley hated that she joked so much about her parents. She knew Ivy wasn’t happy about their relationship, that much she knew without words. “Do you wanna go, I don’t know, to the dance, like as friends, with me?”  _ Would you like to try that again? _

Ivy laughed once, sharp and hard. “Maybe not disappoint my mother that much,”

“Oh,”  _ maybe kissing her would have been better. _

Ivy pouted, and brought their bodies closer if that were possible. “Look, Harley, it's not you. I know that sounds like the worst thing to say but its not, it's not you,”

“Everyone knows you’re a lesbian, Ivy,”

A laugh came and then another sigh. “Yes but my parents aren’t exactly  _ happy  _ about it, and-“ a sniffle, too. Harley felt like a shit. “Public is different, you know? My dad, if he hears that I embarrassed my mother again with my proclivities, he’ll be, he’ll - I just, I can’t, Harley, it's not you,” 

“Ive, I’m sorry,”

“No, don’t be, please. I need you to believe it's not you, that's all,”

Harley nestled into Ivy’s shoulder. “I believe its not me, that it is is your asshole dad,”

Ivy sighed again, warm and lonely. “It wouldn’t be worth the trouble, for either of us,”

But what if it was worth the trouble? _ Damn it, Harley. What if Ivy is worth more trouble than you can cope with? You’re supposed to staying out of fucking trouble.  _ “I’m sorry about your dad, Ive,”

“Yeah, me too,”

“They want me to go with Hal,” Harley brought her voice back down, remembering the game.

“Lord, no, we can’t have that,” Harley wasn’t sure when it had happened but Ivy’s hands were in her hair, fingers gently lifting her head so they were face to face once more.

“Oh,”

“Harley,” Ivy’s voice was unlike it had ever been, a little sultry, a little scared, totally fucking delectable. Even in the darkness, Harley knew what she wanted, moving her own hand and placing it on Ivy’s knee. “Harls, ca-,” 

There was a noise, a scratching and a shuffle from outside of the closet, and Ivy never had a chance to finish.

_ Fucking, of course.  _

A shadow came over the crack of light, and for a brief second they were plunged into darkness before being dragged back into the light when the closet doors swung open.

“Well, hey there, homos,” 

Selina was faster than Ivy but that didn’t stop the redhead from throwing herself in her friends direction like a bullet. Quick on her feet, Selina gave chase, her screamed words inaudible as she ran. Harley wanted to chase Selina as well, to release the frustration of interruption out on her - but it was not Selina’s fault.  _ You should have embraced the chaos, you should have fucking kissed her. _


	9. i dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- sorry this took longer than i wanted, its been a week  
> \- happy all hallows  
> \- scared about this one hope you all like it!!!  
> \- love u all

The chase had gone on for far longer than it should have, neither Ivy or Selina willing to give in with any speed. Harley simply observed from the corner, her mind lingering on the  _ almost _ , as Kate and Bruce took (entirely incorrect) bets on what had even started the commotion in the first place. The game was long over but when food arrived, Ivy and Selina were pulled back into the evening. They were all laughing again in the end when Selina jumped on her best friend’s back and refused to get down until Ivy declared her forgiven. 

“For what though?” Bruce had asked, and the girls had all shared a knowing look and another laugh. 

Another few hours passed, and a few smokes too, as they watched Nightmare 3 on Bruce’s TV. Harley had tried to enjoy the company, the evening, without worrying too much about whether or not she had fucked everything up with Ivy. She ate her pizza and laughed at jokes and waited for another moment of solitude. 

Selina had called it first, falling asleep on her boyfriend's shoulder, almost certainly pretending to stay asleep as he carried her into the bedroom. 

Kate hadn’t gone long after that, crashing hard where she sat on the other sofa, the TV still bright on her face. Ivy, always the caretaker, had covered her friend over with a throw. 

Then it came, the terrifying awaited moment. Harley and Ivy were finally alone again.

“Do you wanna?” Ivy whispered, offering her hand to Harley. When Harley took it, Ivy smirked and pulled her through one of Bruce’s many doors out into the house. 

They passed through a dark corridor and up a flight of stairs, and into a bedroom not that dissimilar to Bruce’s.

“You okay?” Ivy asked quickly, pulling Harley towards the bed. “This is where I stay when I don’t want to hear those idiots going at it,”

Sitting on the bed, Harley answered. “Yeah, I’m good, Ive,”  _ is that even true?  _

“I- uh,” Ivy sighed. “Come here,” red and blooming, even in the weird castle darkness, Ivy lay her head on the pillow, and tapped her hand on the other. 

Harley pulled at her pigtails and placed her hair ties around her wrist before laying next to her friend.  _ Not entirely messed up, not yet.  _

Ivy was beautiful, paralysingly so, invoking feelings within Harley she had never known before. It was not the need to want but the need to worship. To exist in the presence of something, of someone, so much more remarkable than herself. Neither temple or church had offered Harley the holiness she felt in quiet seconds with Ivy. Moments that made her truly wonder if they had been drawn together by something no one would ever understand. Harley didn’t want Ivy, like a child might want a toy, she needed her,  _ like a plant needs water. You are so fucked. _

“Ivy,”

“Yeah?”

There was nothing stopping her now.  _ Not a thing but yourself _ . Ivy was so close, Harley could feel the heat of her skin against her own. “Thanks for letting me come,”

Ivy chuckled. “Thanks for staying, even when my friends are dickheads,”

There was no reason for Ivy to think that Harley wasn’t a dickhead either, and yet there she lay. 

“Blanket, m’lady?” Harley asked, pulling up the comforter, letting her actions rule.

“Please,” Ivy replied, tucking herself in up to her shoulders. “Tomorrow, we should get out of here early, just you and I. Your mom said I could have you back by four,”

“And your parents?”

“Don’t give a shit,” if Ivy meant herself or her parents, Harley wasn’t sure.

“Just you and I. Harley and Ivy,”

Ivy smiled, warm and bashful. “Exactly. It's your turn to take me somewhere,”

“Anywhere?” Harley knew where she wanted to go.

“Well, yes, within reason,” 

If only Ivy knew the kind of gentle Harley wished they could be. 

For a while, for a timeless time, they just looked at each other, sea meeting sky. There was something wonderful in it, yet something a little painful too. The old Harley surfaced at the excitement, she wanted to break through and be brave and kiss the pretty girl. And with her arrival came the panic too, came the memories, came flashes of  _ him.  _

_ If she knew it all, she wouldn’t be here. You know that.  _

“Arlo,” Ivy’s voice shot through the coming storm. “You’re disappearing again,”

“Sorry,” 

Ivy interlaced their fingers and brought Harley’s hand to her lips. “Can I?” 

Harley nodded, an ache in her gut. 

The kiss was softer than a feather, to her wrist and her fingers and her palm. “Please stop feeling like you have to apologise to me,” Ivy stroked Harley’s blonde mess from her face. “We should sleep, okay? Tomorrow can be our day,”

* * *

  
  


Harley woke how she had slept, her face close to the Ivy’s, her heart full and her mind scattered. There were sharp beams of sunlight streaming through the cracks in the curtains that made Ivy look as if she wore a crown of fire. Whatever the day held, Harley was happy she had woken first.

When Ivy roused (when Harley accidentally woke her stumbling to go pee) she didn't want to hang around long enough to have breakfast with the others. They were both clean and changed within half an hour and Ivy wouldn’t even let Bruce finish his croissant before she had him dropping them off at the poshest subway station Gotham might’ve had. When they arrived, it took Harley an embarrassingly long moment to work out the route they needed to take without having to tell Ivy where they were actually going.

Old Gotham’s murky shoreline and grey beaches held little glory, and Arcade Mile was far rustier these days than it had been a decade ago, but still, Harley felt only excitement at the prospect of showing Ivy one of her most favourite places to be. A place where chaos and courage were encouraged alike. The masses still came down to hook ducks and ride unsafe metal death traps, no matter the mess and neglect, and Harley was ready to join them.

“So this is where the Harlequin’s come for fun, eh?” Ivy took Harley’s hand, bold but casual, as they exited the station and headed towards the strip. 

There were demons, at the Mile, but there had been joy, too.  _ Before him.  _ Dr Parze had said that reclamation was important, that Harley shouldn’t let  _ him _ take anything else from her.

“Too silly?” 

“Definitely not,” Ivy said. “Show me some fun, Arlo,”

Harley grinned, squeezing Ivy around the waist. “But where first, madam?”

“Duh, take me to your favourite spot,”

It was the funhouse, Harley couldn't be sure why but it had always been the stupid funhouse. Maybe it was the wonder of the circus lights, or the thrill of perpetual challenge. Perhaps it was the memories of family Sunday’s  _ and of hours spent chasing your brother to the top. _ There was no queue,  _ there never is,  _ or seemingly anyone else even at the funhouse; only the token guy and the cobwebs. Ivy was remarkably quiet as they entered, hand in hand, sharing with Harley only  _ that smirk.  _

They took the shakey stairs up to the second floor, and like they were in Grease, or one of Ma’s other equally embarrassing films, they glided through the funhouse together. Through hanging foam and up net ladders, passing red and pink and green and blue bulbs that lit the place up like a rainbow. Free and flirty and foolish, they conquered every reckless step as one, until they came to the next set of stairs up, and Ivy stopped them on a slab of moving floor.

“Okay,” she said over crackled clown laughter coming from a dodgy speaker. “Why did you think this was silly? Do I give off ‘better than you’ vibes or something?”

Harley shook her head.  _ It's a funhouse, aren’t all funhouses silly?  _ “What no? It’s just, I-,”

“Go on, tell me I’m a killjoy,” 

_A pragmatist, maybe,_ though Harley was yet sure how much of that Ivy considered a necessity to her survival. “Because I like it, you know, because I picked it,” 

“Damn, shit, okay. You’re so,” she paused, which was lucky because Harley was a little scared to hear Ivy finish such a sentence. “I like your mind, remember?”

“Yeah?”

“When you’re not hiding,” Ivy huffed, pulling them together, the lights whirling around them as they balanced face to face. “Harley?

“Mm?”

The space between their bodies was shrinking, Ivy's green eyes and sweet cheeks and red lips drawing closer.

“I want to kiss you, so I’m going to, okay?”

The floor felt like it was growing more erratic all of a sudden, the surrounding walls turning to jelly, like the funhouse was going to chew them up and spit them out.  _ She is braver than you.  _ Chaos and adrenaline combined, Harley was excited and terrified all the same. She drew away and took Ivy’s hand, pulling her through the mayhem again, giggling as she did. 

Ivy was laughing, too, thankfully. “Oh God, what are you doing?”

Harley kept going until they reached the last room, up the stairs and into a hall of mirrors at the top of the house. Ivy was quick at her heels. The fear within Harley’s bones had become boldness. The boldness of the other Harley who crept to the service at the first shot of joy, as if she had heard the challenge of Ivy’s own courage. Before there was time to back out, Harley was spinning Ivy into her arms and pushing her gently against a mirror. 

Ivy pushed back, and it was hot as Hell. They looked at each other for a while. A thousand different them in a thousand different mirror worlds looking at each other too.  _ It's okay, you can do this.  _

But she didn’t, Ivy was faster. 

Ivy kissed Harley, and Harley kissed Ivy back, and Harley knew then that nothing would ever be the same again. 

There were kisses - Harley had kissed so many people - and then there were awakenings. Deep and erratic and hard, their lips came together. Harley’s hands ran away from her, up Ivy’s side and up her face, chipped nails running through fire hair. 

Ivy tasted as sweet as she looked, as sweet as talked, as sweet as she smelt. There was nothing - not one fucking thing in Harley’s whole fucking life - that had felt as important as kissing Pamela Isley had become.

“Oh,” Harley murmured breathless when Ivy eventually pulled away, with her red smirk standing at full salute and ready to disarm. “Finally,”

Then Ivy laughed again, soft and silly, and Harley thought it was so cute she was overcome so she kissed Ivy again, her lips, her cheeks, her chin and her neck, and the giggling continued. 

They had made it out of the funhouse eventually, Ivy wearing Harley’s cap and their fingers interlocked again like no-one was watching. Nothing could bring Harley back to Earth, if she hadn't been so damn happy she might have been overrun by all the emotion. Every time Ivy looked in Harley’s direction colours grew sharper, sounds louder, the smog-stained sun a little brighter. As if they were the only people on the strip, they rode the rusty Ferris wheel and kissed at the top like they were still in a movie, then they kissed on the waltzers and the coaster too. Each kiss different and each kiss desperate. There was joy in every stupid thing they did together, every giddy step they took. Harley got distracted by a tin can shoot, too, and an hour was wasted defending her honour in front of her new lady. The grotty guy behind the stall, about their age, did not enjoy Harley’s cowboy impression as much as she had enjoyed doing, as much as Ivy’s red cheeks said she had enjoyed it too. In the end, Harley had won Ivy a weird looking bear with the most terrifying plastic eyes that a toy could have. He was so ugly that there was no way you couldn’t love the bear, and Ivy carried it for the rest of the day. It was no museum Hyena but it seemed to be appreciated all the same. Lunch was as fun as the rides had been, they bought donuts and fries, and sat by the ghost train, and Harley taught Ivy how to enjoy both with ketchup. Then Ivy had pulled Harley behind the food shacks and they had made out some more. There were a thousand thoughts, a thousand questions that Harley needed to ask,  _ yet those lips, the damn electricity. _

Before it had even started, Harley’s best day came to a close, the once bright sky now a musky looming grey. An alert Ivy sweeping her back towards reality, adamant about not missing Ma’s curfew.

Harley felt sad the whole way home, on the subway and the bus, despite the rest of it. She didn’t want the day to end, to have to spend the evening alone with her stormy thoughts, to have to send Ivy back to a house not a home. Ivy talked about tree species and colour changes in leaves on the walk from bus stop to home, and Harley listened intently, hoping that somehow time might just freeze.

When they finally reached home, Harley tried to lead Ivy across the yard - no one could see them kissing besides the house - but they were interrupted by a bellow from the porch before they had a chance to do anything

Ma, watering her flower pots just at the precise moment her daughter was due home, waved at them both like one of those people on airport runways.  _ Fuck you, mom. As subtle as a flamingo in Alaska.  _ Ivy was too polite, already greeting ‘Mrs Quinzel.’ 

“Good time at your friends house? How is the poor boy?” Ma asked. 

_ Poor, really, Ma? _

Ivy did well to contain her laughter. “Bruce is good, Mrs Quinzel,”

“Can you go, like inside, mother so we can say goodbye? Please,”

Harley’s mother pulled a twisted face. “Well, yes, of course, in a second,” she turned from her daughter to Ivy. “What time do you have to be home, Ivy, love? You could stay for dinner and I can drop you home?”

A warmth arose in Harley’s cheeks “Yeah, yeah, stay, Ive. Just for a bit, even,”

Ivy smiled at mother and daughter both. ‘I guess, I can stay for dinner,” she smiled. “Though I should probably be back about eight, before my mom,”

Harley squealed, and gave her mother a wet kiss on the cheek. “Aah, thanks, Ma, thank you, thank you,”  _ you wonderful old fool. _

“Alright,” she said with a composed smile, holding Harley for a moment. “Alright, Harleen. Now let's get your friend in from the cold and put some flesh on those bones,”

Dinner had been done and eaten and cleared by five-thirty, Harley’s Ma ready to ‘impress the guest’ as her father called it. Whether it was a friend of her daughters, or a shitty lawyer Pa knew, or one of Ma’s reading buddies, that woman could whip up a three course meal in twenty minutes. It was only them and Ma, Harley’s father was running an errand or something. It had been hard to listen to anything really when there was so much to look at. Harley was just happy that Ma’s skill left her plenty of time to spend with Ivy alone in her bedroom before she had to head home. 

Being with Ivy was a lot of things. Safe and soft, warm and arousing, electric and all fucking consuming. Kissing her was all those things and more. There were a thousand words to describe Ivy just as there were a thousand questions Harley still yearned to ask her. So many words that would never be said. None of it mattered when their lips met, as skin brushed against skin, as the weight of Ivy’s perfect body pressed against Harley’s own as they lay side by side on the bed. The only word that filled Harley's mind then was  _ red. Red, red, red, red, red… _

“We should, uh,” Ivy pulled away slowly, voice airy, and they both turned towards the Tom and Jerry clock Harley still had proudly on her wall opposite her bed. “It’s seven, I’ll have to go soon,” Ivy kissed her again quickly. 

“Please don’t,” Harley said with a half-assed laugh, feeling raw to the nerve. She had meant to ask about Homecoming but kissing Ivy was so fucking distracting. 

“I have to, I do not want to, trust me” there was no lie detectable in Ivy’s tone and that was the worst part of it all.

“Do ya parents really need Ivy more than I do?”  _ A lost cause, idiot. Ma never said she could stay over anyway. Who knows why she had even invited her for dinner? _

Ivy sat up on the bed, pushing her hair back off of her face and releasing the world's biggest sigh. 

“Sorry, Arlo, different rules, different nights, always fucking arbitrary,”

Harley smiled, the disappointment real but none of it because of Ivy. She sat up on the bed too so she could wrap her arms around her friend.  _ A more than friend?  _

“Tell me about it, if you’d like,”

“My parents? They’re rich shits who hate their kid, that's all there is too it,”

Harley could feel the irritation coming off of Ivy’s skin. Ivy was always radiant, and well, Harley 

knew the frustration personally.  _ Bottling, that's what that hippy dude in Group had called it.  _

“That sounds like something worth talking about but like but you don’t have to,” 

Ivy looked away. “It’s hard, I guess. No one but Selina an-and-“ 

Harley understood that too.  _ When you aren't just bottling, you are burying. _ There were things Harley couldn’t talk about, not with her parents, or her therapists unless she was forced, and  _ hopefully never with her. _ The worst things that Harley wouldn't even let herself think about. Ghosts that lived in the dark within her. Solitary secrets that made Harley’s dead brother and abusive boyfriend trauma feel like the memory of a warm day.

Ivy continued. “My dad, he’s not around much, but when he is home he is not a nice man. And, well, my mom is a fucking drunk, at her best. She doesn’t actually care but if I’m not home before she is and she is weekend wasted, mom will tell  _ him,  _ and it’ll just start a whole thing. Things are quiet, right now, _ ” _

The way Ivy said  _ him _ made Harley shudder. There were so many terrible men and so many girls who knew them as  _ him.  _ Whatever Ivy’s dad did, whatever he was, there was a wrongness to him already. Harley really did miss her brother, he would have been one of the good ones. 

“Ivy, that's really shit,”

Ivy chuckled. “Yes, it is. I guess there’s more, if you really want to know, but we have to go,”

Harley was ready to leave it regardless, Ivy’s face having grown puffy and her usual calm composure cracked. Did Ivy know she always left a rollover? Always keeping a secret for next time.  _ Maybe it's a win that Ivy implies a ‘next time‘ at all.  _

“Okay, come on then,”

“Harley,” Ivy pulled her in for another kiss, or three. “You’re pretty remarkable, okay, and I have had a great day and - and I like you a lot,” 

_ Where does she get that from? _ Her ability to say what she thinks and remain cool as she does it. Harley sometimes felt like she couldn’t express anything without accidentally forming a parade or setting something ablaze. The pull of Ivy’s gravity grew a little tighter around her waist, the endless fall set forever into motion. 

_ This could hurt. This could end in tears. This could all be worth it.  _

“I like ya, too,”  _ so so much. _ Harley liked Ivy more than scoring a 10 on the mat in front of her Grandpa, more than The Golden Girls and triple cheese pizza, and the first step out of the hospital after weeks locked in a human cage _.  _ Harley liked Ivy so much she hated herself a little for it, hated that she would inflict herself and her shit onto someone so undeserving.  _ There is no stopping gravity though, or the forever present truth that Harley Quinzel will always be a little nuts.  _ “Really, Ive, you’re, like, a total fucking slice and definitely the smartest person I’ve ever met,” 

Harley didn’t care about the idiocy of her words, all the shame washed out of her when Ivy blushed, rogue cheeks and a flustered smile. There was another awakening hidden at the corner of Ivy’s curled lips. As if in her pretty face, her emerald eyes, Harley could see a rebirth awaiting her if she just had the courage to pursue it. That maybe someone,  _ someone out of this world and out of your league,  _ could actually want her in return. That maybe some people, good people like Ivy, could give as much as they take.  _ Pretty girls don't blush unless they like you, right?  _

Harley kissed Ivy once more, she kissed her with all the attention such an act deserved. Harley had decided she would never stop kissing Ivy, for as long as Ivy was wanting to kiss her back. 

  
  
  



	10. please god don't let me fall in love and want to do disgusting things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- hey friends, sorry it has been a while, things in rl have been a mess  
> \- find me over on tumblr @hqpi if you wanna stay updated on when i'm going to post  
> \- thanks for all the support on this silly little story  
> \- minor tw on this one for Harley's backstory, take care of yourselves  
> \- specific warning in the chapter end notes

The Wednesday after the funhouse, Harley fell back to reality; she fell hard and straight onto her face. Sunday had been a day of longing, of hushed phone calls and missing Ivy like a limb. It was nice to know though that when Harley called, Ivy would answer, that there was no worry that she was lying about where she was.  _ About who she is.  _ Monday was therapy and phone calls too, as well as stolen kisses in empty corridors, and the whispers of Selina and Bruce. Tuesday was her favourite, all making out on Harley’s bed when school rolled out under the guise of ‘working on a science project’.

It was Wednesday that shook the ecstasy from Harley’s mind and reminded her of the bullshit she was up against. 

“Look, Harley, I know it’s dumb,” Diana always seemed all the more European when she was a irate. “But just pick a boy, okay? We just need him to walk you out on stage for five minutes at the dance. He doesn’t even have to be on the football team,”

Harley huffed, knowingly resembling a pissed off horse. “This is bullshit, Diana. And it’s, like, definitely a bit sexist,”

“Yes,” Jessica agreed. “But it means a lot to the school,”

“Means a lot to Zee’s image,” 

Diana rolled her big brown eyes. “For me, Harley. Any boy will do, there will be anarchy otherwise, they’ll want to vote you off the squad and I’ll be alone in defending you,”

“Well, I can help,” Jessica said and smiled at Harley softly.

“They can’t do that,” Harley liked anarchy, and she could deal with the bullshit traditions, threats, however, were less welcome though.  _ Don’t risk it.  _ She needed cheer if she wanted to return to the gym, it wasn’t even worth risking for a worthy fight.

“Please don’t let them try,” Diana was annoyingly honest, the world’s most infuriating peacekeeper.

“Any boy?”

“From this school, yes,” Diana smiled like she had just won hand to hand combat. “And its next week, so I need to know by the end of this one, please,”

Harley could only cross her arms and sigh.

  
  


Ivy was less concerned about Harley going to Homecoming with a boy than Harley herself and it was hard to not to be mildly offended. 

“You’ll be okay, Harley. It's just a few hours, just a dance,” 

_ You do it then _ , she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead Harley played with the cold grass beneath them. Lunches outside with Ivy had become a good tradition. Part of the schedule Harley had carved for herself in her new world.

“Really wish I could just go with you,”

Ivy lowered her eyes and reached out her hand to Harley. “Me too, it’s-“

“I’m not asking again, I wish we could, is all,” Harley took the hand that was offered to her and groaned. “Will you help me?”

“Yes, of course, I’m not letting you go with any old weirdo. I need to know they won’t spike your drink or touch your ass,” Ivy came closer, her perfect face perfectly perfect. “And, you know, make sure they don’t try anything with my girl,”

Harley knew that there was a risk of someone seeing them, where they sat at the treeline by the edge of the field, but she kissed Ivy anyway. She didn’t care if anyone did see. 

And Ivy’s reaction - the way she pulled at the front of Harley’s shirt - said she didn’t care much either at that moment. 

Ma had given Harley the all clear to hang at Bruce’s after school, with what she had affectionately and embarrassingly named ‘Harleen’s new squad’, and there was definitely some guilt in Harley’s heart about the lie. Guilt that was easily chased away though, by a glance across at Ivy (who had brought her shitty car to school) as they ate drive-thru donuts in a wide and vacant parking lot, by a laugh and a kiss. Harley was sure she would never bore of the company. 

“What about Tommy?” Ivy asked

“I don’t know who that is,”

“Vic?”

“Which one?

“Floyd? Harvey?”

Harley shrugged. “Again, who?”

“What about, like,” Ivy offered Harley the last donut in the box as she spoke. “Ed or Johnny, one of the weirdos?”

“Really?” The donuts were good.

“They’d do for Homecoming,” Ivy said, collecting Harley’s rubbish. “I guarantee they aren’t already going,”

Harley raised an eyebrow. “Johnny’s a mess. I mean, I like him but-”

“Yeah, well, that’ll piss Kara off and it’d be worth it just for that,” Ivy bit her lip as she smirked. “And I think he likes you so he’d definitely do it,” 

“What?”

Ivy took a red nail and brushed a crumb from Harley’s cheek. “You’re likeable,” 

_ Does she know how ridiculous she sounds? _ “He’s safe, I guess,”

“For the school mule,” Ivy took her hand. “And I can totally take Jonathan Crane if he tries anything,” 

Harley was pretty sure he wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be caught out again by a cute boy with a wistful smile, but Johnny had been kind.  _ Lonely, like us.  _ The sun was beginning to set a wild red behind them and Ivy looked perfect. 

“Do you really think he likes me? I hardly know him,” 

“Didn’t stop me,” Ivy said, blushing a little. 

It was such a thing to say that Harley couldn’t even address it. She said something stupid, as usual, instead. “What happened with you and Kara? Like, it’s not just Diana, right?”

Ivy sighed, and squeezed Harley’s fingers. “She is awful. At least, she was very specifically once to Selina, and well, battle lines and all that,” 

It was becoming increasingly obvious Kara and Selina’s falling out had been the catalyst of Diana and Ivy’s break up, and it was hard not to poke and prod and pry. Diana and Ivy just didn’t seem like they hated each other all that much, and something about the whole situation made Harley sad. She squeezed Ivy’s fingers in return. 

“You’re a good friend, Ive,” 

Harley’s girl of fire smiled, her hand on the wheel. “Come on, let’s go make out somewhere we’re less likely to get hate crime'd,” 

  
  


Ivy’s house was still overwhelming, with its untouched furniture and spotless floors. Nothing about the building seemed to compliment Ivy, none if it looked like her home. They had walked from the front door to the six foot fridge in the kitchen and Harley couldn’t see a thing that indicated that a teenage girl even lived in the house. There was only her room, hidden away in the corner of the house.

Ivy made them stop for almond milk and powdered shakes, something Harley enjoyed more than she would have thought. She wanted to appreciate the silly things, like homemade milkshake and donuts in the car. The teenage things, the small and soft things that never happened with him. Those things worth collecting, memorising, embedding to the wall of ones brain. Harley wanted to embrace them, to feel and experience them all.

And well, Harley might have been able to do so if she and Ivy had truly been alone in the weird white house. 

The woman entered like a mist, ominous and as if she had floated in on the wind. She was overdressed, in some sort of fancy black dress, and carried a lit cigarette in one hand. Her eyes were blue but her hair and her nose, those were Ivy’s.

“Mom,”

“Oh, Pamela,” the woman said, taking a drag of her smoke. “Is it that late in the afternoon already?”

“Yeah,” Ivy said nonchalantly, putting the milk into the fridge. “It's past four,“

The woman -  _ Ivy’s mother  _ \- looked at Harley. She looked and she looked and she looked. “A friend?”

“This is Harleen,” Ivy looked at Harley too. “She just started this semester, remember?”

“Ah, the new girl,” she smirked much like her daughter, though only half as sexy. Harley remembered what Ivy had told her, about how all the parents new who she was. “And why is she here?”

Ivy had venom on her tongue, hidden beneath quiet answers. “Because we have a science project,”

“Anything interesting?” 

“Science,”

Another long drag came, and an even longer silence, as the woman looked at her daughter. “Well, best be on with it then, darling. Nice to meet you,  _ Harleen,”  _ she didn’t offer her hand, or even much of a look. 

If it was rude not to answer, Harley was rude. 

“Oh, Pamela, dear,”

“Yes,” 

“Your father will be home next week, though do not ask me what day his flight is, his secretary was less than helpful in that department,” 

Ivy took Harley’s wrist and pulled her from the room without offering her mother another look or word.

They bundled into the room, Ivy still dragging Harley as she stormed into her domain, locking the door behind them.  _ God, to have a lock again.  _ Everything was a little distorted. 

Ivy clicked on her stereo and turned quickly. Her eyes were wide when she turned to look at Harley, shining and sharp. _Hungry, even._

“Kiss me, Arlo,”

“Oh,” Harley croaked. “Okay.”

They came together as if magnets made them so, as if Harley had finally lost the chance to fight the pull. Ivy’s lips were warm and wet and wild, her hands finding their way to Harley’s hips, and pulling her closer, body against body. 

Harley’s own hands could not be stopped either, moving up beneath Ivy’s shirt, pulling at the fabric. Everything was fast and heavy, the air and the kisses and Harley’s brain. They got to the bed somehow, and Ivy’s shirt was on the floor. _When had that happened?_ Hands were finding places that hadn’t been visited in so long. A gentle finger on the button of jeans, a handful of skirt. _This isn’t supposed to happen today._ Ivy’s mouth on Harley’s ear, a tongue on her neck. Everything was fast and heavy. _Do you think he thinks about you sometimes?_ Ivy’s thighs clutched around thigh, weight pressing down on weak hips. A weak girl. _Do you think she’ll forgive you?_ Everything was fast and heavy. Mouth and hands. A hand on a breast. _Whose?_ Mouth and hands and red. Everything fast and everything heavy.

“Hey, you okay, Harley?” Ivy’s words were jolting, like a fleeting spark of electricity on Harley’s recently exposed skin. “Hey, Harls,”

“Mm, yeah,”

Ivy rolled off of Harley’s hips and came to her side instead, placing a hand on her shoulder for a moment before pulling it abruptly away. “You’re shaking, like a lot,”

“I’m sorry,”

Ivy shook her head and sat up instead, reaching for shirt. Harley felt like a fish, an unattractive dead fish. “No, no, Harley, its okay, I’m sorry, for pushing it, Im - fuck, I shouldn’t have done that,”

_ That's not it, though, you have to tell her that's not it.  _

“S’fine,” Harley stuttered, pushing up on her elbows and straightening her bra, no mind that her mouth refused to cooperate with her brain.

Ivy offered her hand and Harley took it. “Sorry, Harley. I’m really sorry,”

“Don’t be, it’s just-,” 

“Whatever it is for you, I’m sorry, okay? I shouldn’t have got so -  _ ugh _ . If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t be all, you know,”

“Sexy?” 

Ivy laughed at that and it was like an invisible balloon of tension had popped between. “Whatever you want to call it, I’m sorry. My mom she just,” she sighed. “God, I hate them. They fuck everything up,”

“Think this one is on me more than your mom and dad,”

“You don’t always have to be a clown, Harley, not with me,”

_ It’s not a joke. _

Harley took Ivy’s fingers and brought them to her lips; she kissed them one by one.  _ You want this, too, you cannot leave her with all the guilt. _

“Do you want me to take you home?” Ivy asked, her green eyes dark and sad like Fall pine.

“No - what? No, please. Can we just-?” Harley brought her head back to the bed and took Ivy with her. She pulled Ivy, red in face as well now, into her chest, and held onto her like glue, wrapping their limbs into one mass.  _ God Bless that fucking lock. _

“Forgive me?”

“Ive, there really is nothing to forgive,” Harley whispered into her hair. “But yeah, if it makes you feel better,”

“It does,” Ivy kept her eyes away, trailing a finger up and around Harley’s wrist.  _ She is safe, this is safe, you are safe.  _

“I’m sorry that I freaked, its not, like, how I pictured this, at all,”

Ivy kept her eyes away but Harley was sure she was holding on tighter. “I’m flattered to know that you did at all,” she replied, as if she wasn’t the most beautiful thing Harley had ever seen.

“I mean, y'pretty hot,”

_ Hot and smart and caring and kind and… _

_ What if it is all too soon? Are you just being a mad fool again? _

Ivy turned into Harley’s side, bringing their gazes together, red hair curling into the crook of Harley’s shoulder.  _ She makes things better, it doesn’t have to be like before.  _

“Can I ask you something?” Ivy’s voice was low and tender, her eyes clear but she seemed a little shaky all the same. “Something personal?”

Harley swallowed, trying to focus on the music that was still playing, and trying even harder to be brave. “Sure,”

“Have you - uh, I mean, I assume you have, but maybe not - but have you, you know,  _ since _ him?”

The music didn’t help much.  _ Breathe, breathe, breathe.  _ Ivy had the most beautiful face, the kindest eyes, and the largest heart, and she was offering it all. A safe place to empty it all. Harley knew she had to trust her, if things were ever to be good.

“Yeah, it’s been a while, I guess,” Harley’s voice was only a whisper. “But it’s not, it's not  _ that _ ,”

A finger, simple and reassuring, stroked Harley’s cheek. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“It’s hard,”  _ harder than hard.  _

“I promised I wouldn’t disappear, and I meant it,”

Harley shuffled her body from beneath Ivy, and flipped to her side. They were already in sync, Ivy following Harley’s movement and coming in to hold her from behind. It was nice to be held, Ivy was that little bit taller and it meant Harley’s head tucked well beneath a pointed chin. Spooning was not something Harley had experienced much of; she liked it a lot. Ivy’s arm felt warm and strong and defensive, like she had built a fort from her skin around Harley’s body, keeping out the world and the worries both. 

“I haven’t, you know, done anything like that since,” Harley said, her voice less pathetic. “Yeah, since him but it’s not that. I want to,” it was easier talking with Ivy’s arms around her and her eyes away. “I want to be with you, like that,” Harley had spent many dark and lonely and lovely moments thinking of Ivy’s body against her own. Maybe too many times given how long they had known each other. 

“Tell me,” Ivy’s breath was warm.

“What if we get in too deep, and then you find out who I am, and you hate me?” 

“I won’t,”

Harley tightened Ivy’s arms around her. “But what if you do?”

“We can avoid it all,” Ivy said. “If you tell me now, before we go too far, and you let me like you anyway,” she kissed the back of Harley’s head. “Because I will, Arlo, I’m sure of it,”

There was no reason aside from the shame to not tell Ivy the truth of it, to let her decide for herself if Harley was tainted, and perhaps maybe, shame shared weighed less than shame carried alone.  _ All or nothing, all or nothing, all or... _

“I did a lot of shitty things last winter, after I met him,” Harley wasn’t really sure where to start, how to piece the fragments into a narrative. “His name was Jay, he was like twenty-two when we met, some girls from gym invited me out a few times, we met older guys, the whole usual stupid shit but, I don’t know,  _ we  _ were different. Intense, you know? Anyway, we pissed off my parents, we did a lot of drugs, we pissed off my parents some more, they put bars on my fucking windows, and then when they called the cops on him one night when he was trying to get me out, we skipped out when he was released the next morning. My mom had dropped me off at school and everything,”

“Skipped town?”

“State,” 

“Shit, Harls, you were a minor,” Ivy whispered.  _ You still are even if you feel one hundred. _

“Yeah, well, that’s what my parents thought, too. But we were in love, you know, so didn’t stop us going all Bonnie and Clyde. And yeah, things got messy, and I got sicker, and everything jus-,” a shiver took over Harley’s bones.

“Cops?”

“Runaways on acid aren’t exactly high priority. Not in this shit-stained city. My parents eventually got them to log it as a potential kidnapping but I had been gone for weeks at that point. I don’t know, that stuff is all just noise to me. Things just got worse and worse as time went on and I was an idiot,”

The music had calmed, arriving at a mid album lull. “Why, specifically?”

“Let it go on, let it unravel. We were living in his van, well a van he had acquired, for a while near the end, stealing and shit, he was drinking a lot, hurting me, and I never went home,” Harley sniffled pathetically. “One night he was desperate, the rot really setting in, and so he took a pipe to a gas station. Guy behind the counter needed twelve stitches and he came back to me with dollar bills covered in blood,”

“So, what, they caught him on that and brought you home?” Ivy moved one hand to Harley’s and propped herself up on her other arm. Harley still didn’t turn to look at her.

“They did get him in the end for that but not straight away,” 

Ivy was solid and warm against Harley’s back, “I’m sorry, Harley,” 

Harley laughed and coughed and cried a little all at once. “That’s not the worst of it,” 

“Hey,” Ivy sat up, her arm still across Harley. “Hey, come here,” 

Harley tried wiping her face on her arm as she moved, before Ivy took it into her hands. 

“Stupid,”

Ivy shook her head, red mess falling around her shoulders. “No, it’s okay, and it is definitely not stupid,” 

_ You don’t deserve it, you don’t, you don’t, you don’t. _

“I want to, to tell,” Harley whispered, Ivy’s gaze heavy against her. “This isn’t, this isn’t me,” 

Ivy crossed her legs around Harley’s waist, pulling her into her lap as they sat together on the bed. She laid a kiss to blonde hair across a wet cheek.

“I’m sorry, for bringing this all on,” 

Leaning backwards, Harley let herself fall into Ivy’s grip once again. “I have to tell you,” she sighed. “ I have to finish it,” 

“Have to?”

“Told myself, you know. I- I want to tell you, to be truthful with you,” 

Even far into the day Ivy still smelt of flowers. 

“Thank you,” Ivy said. “For wanting to,”

“I’ve never felt like this before,” 

“This sad?” 

“No,” Harley answered, twisting herself around and pushing herself into Ivy’s shoulder. “Not that,” 

“Oh,” Ivy’s voice was wispy, her grip still tight, and the silence that came after her reply, heavy. 

_ You feel all the things all the times you shouldn’t feel them. You feel too fucking much for someone as normal as Ivy.  _

“Harley?”

“Yeah,” her head was still face first in shoulder.

“Tell me how you got home?” 

Harley took a deep breath and kept going. “So it’s rob, motel, drugs, rob, van, drugs, all of it over and over until he is so fucked up, we’re both so fucked, that I barely know what month it is and he is… he’s just fucking lost it,”  _ not that he had all that much to lose. “ _ And then the gas station, and then two, coulda been three, I can’t remember, anyway it was a few days after I had to, that’s when I,” Harley’s head was still against Ivy, moving slowly down from her shoulder to her chest, vine like arms holding her as she spoke.

“You’re okay,”

_ You’re okay. _

“I don’t even remember how but I remembered,” Harley could hear her own breath scratching in her throat as she spoke, she was surely shaking again. “I remembered I hadn’t had my period, like in a while,”

Ivy’s breath was uneven too, though she tried to hide it. “You’re okay,” 

“Guess I hadn’t had it for a while, and with the drugs and the diagnosable bullshit, I hadn't exactly been paying attention,” Harley’s face was fully against Ivy’s chest, a minor reward amongst all the fucking terror. The voice that said Ivy would never see her again after today was getting louder by the second. “I told him, fuck knows why I told him and, uh, he and I, we did a test and he was,” 

“Unkind?”

Ivy’s choice of words always offered Harley light when she least expected it.

“Yeah, yeah, he was unkind. He was always unkind,” Harley agreed. “You can, you can guess the rest,” 

“Yeah,” Ivy said. “But you’re allowed to say it,”

“I don’t- uh, I,”  _ don’t cry, do not fucking cry.  _ “Ive, I’m such a fuck up,”

“Harley,”

“I’ve never told anyone this stuff before, not anyone real, not beyond the gas station really,”  Ivy kissed Harley’s hair. “And I’m telling you now, and this was supposed to all just be fun and, and, it’s not, not an excuse or anything, really but I didn’t want to, to get the-“

_ You can let it happen but you are too cowardly to name it? _

“You don't need an excuse,” Ivy brought Harley up to look at her, bringing her face close and kissing Harley’s cheeks and nose like she was some sort of precious doll. The pull caught Harley by surprise when she brought their eyes to lock.  “You did nothing wrong,” Ivy said, firmly. 

“Then why do I feel so fucking bad?”

The sound of Ivy’s sigh was like a breeze through summer. “Oh, my sweet girl,” gently she came forward but still she held Harley’s face in her palms. “I am sorry this happened to you,”

_ Has anyone ever said that, or anything like it, before?  _ Even if they had, Harley was more than ready to block it all out anyway to make Ivy’s care, her words, a little sweeter. __

“There is more,”  _ always, always more. A whole summer in a mental health unit more. _

“Tell me then,”

_ You want her love, not her sympathy, you fucking idiot.  _

_ Enough, enough for now. _

“Later,”

Harley kissed Ivy with all the determination she could muster. 

For a moment, Ivy drew back but Harley didn’t panic, she let a moment pass between them. She let Ivy close the gap. 

And they kissed for a while, gently and fully clothed. They kissed, and kissed, and  _ only _ kissed. And Ivy Isley, unlike any other, revealed herself to be the steward gentleman of a young Harleen’s nightmares  _ and _ fantasies.

They kissed and they kissed and they kissed until curfew, and Harley felt safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw mentions of abortion, violence (assault and ipv)


	11. no matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> \- still no one editing this so all mistakes r my own  
> \- thanks for the support again xx

Homecoming was becoming a hindrance, a hurdle that Harley couldn’t wait to be over, blocking all the things that she wanted to think about. Things felt different with Ivy, after they had shared what they shared, and a dumb dance with a dumb boy made Harley feel like she playing dress up. Different wasn’t bad, it was simply different and that was all Harley wanted to focus on. Even though a voice in Harley’s head kept trying to remind her how obsessive that thought was.  _ There is no need to ruin anything.  _ She didn’t want to go to the dance. There was no need to tell anyone else about her and Ivy, in fact Harley enjoyed the secret, but to spend a night with someone else? Everything about it felt strange and Harley just didn’t want to participate in the entire charade. 

_ Is it weird that Ivy trusts you? To spend that much time alone with someone else? Is it weird that you even think it could be weird?  _

In English class, that was where Harley had told Ivy she would ask Johnny to the dance. She would ask him in English even if it killed her. 

  
  


Although, it hadn’t killed anyone. It had been remarkably simple, and well, Johnny had said yes way too quickly for a guy Harley knew had never once considered going to a school dance before. The language corridor was overrun at class end so she had pulled the boy with limbs like straw up against the wall. He was cute, and remarkably uncreepy given his whole vibe, but he was also no science lesbian with an angel face. He was more of a ‘maybe in middle school’ kind of cute. 

“Just as friends, though, Johnny. Like, I’m not coming on to you,” 

“Blunt,” he replied with a furrowed brow. “And assumptive,”

“Sorry,”

“No, it’s good. And yeah, it’ll be fun. Well, it will be interesting, and I’m happy to do you the favour,”

Harley smiled. “Thank you,”

“Although, I have a few conditions,” he pulled his hood up as he spoke. “None too weird, I hope,”

“Go on,” Harley took a deep breath.

“We should hang out sometime,” he raised his hands. “As friends, even with others, or whatever. Just think it could be fun, yknow? That we could be, like, actual friends,”

Harley nodded.  _ You’d never have had the courage to ask him for real friendship. Boys are such different creatures sometimes.  _ “Yeah, sure. That would be fun. What else?” 

“I’m picking you up, I’m buying a corsage, I’m gonna outshine everyone of those football pricks,”

“Oh,” Harley wiggled an eyebrow. “You better or my Ma might kill ya,”

He smiled, looking down at his feet.

“Nice, well, then,”

“Next Friday, like 8? I have the game first,”

Johnny pulled a face and lent against the wall. The corridor around them had begun to empty and they were definitely going to be late for next class. “Yeah, nah, I’ll skip that but the dance, I’ll do,”

“It’s all I need,” Harley said. “Oh, and one more thing?”

“Mm,”

“I’m not judging or anything but,” she lowered her voice. “No selling, alright?”

He laughed, tapping an invisible watch and pushing off the wall. “Harley, I’m not stupid enough to sell at school,”

  
  


Harley couldn’t catch Ivy until lunchtime, and when she finally saw her across the quad, she had run into bomber jacket wearing arms like she was at an airport. Ivy had received her wide open as Selina laughed at them both. 

“Hey,” Harley said with a smile.  _ Not kissing her now hurts worse than before you ever did. _

“Hey yourself,” Ivy replied with a smile and an arm less than subtly wrapped around Harley’s hip.

“ _ Hi, Selina, how are you? _ ” 

“Kitty, are you jealous?” Ivy raised an eyebrow at her tiny moody friend.

“Always,” Selina replied without a beat. “Bruce needs me to bring him something anyway so I will catch you losers later,”

Harley winked. “Kitty delivering her kitty?” If it was too far, Harley couldn’t tell. Selina slapped her arm playfully as she strolled away, Ivy’s laughter surrounding them. Friends were good but Harley was glad that she and Ivy could finally be alone again, taking to the treeline in the cold that they had gotten used to. Less treeline and more branchline now, as winter set in.

“I missed you,” Ivy said as soon as they sat down, taking an old man’s thermos from her bag and pouring tea.  _ Adorable in all the ways she shouldn’t be.  _

“You did?”  _ Even after last night? _

Ivy screwed up her face, her brow low and tense.

“Of course I did, Arlo,” she said. “Did you not miss me?”

“So much,” Harley said, desperately. There was no way to tell a beautiful girl who you hadn’t even known that long that without her you felt as if you had lost an arm. “I ju-,”

“Harley, it’s okay if you’re okay. Are you okay?” Harder still to lie to those pretty emerald eyes.

“I’m okay, I just don’t want you to, I don’t know, pity me, I guess, after everything,”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah,”

Ivy came closer, her skin cold against Harley’s own. “I like you,”  _ but why?  _ “I think you’re kind of weird and and kind of wonderful,”

_ Really, really, really hard not to kiss her.  _ Harley squeezed Ivy;s fingers instead.

“How were classes today?” 

Harley rolled her eyes. “Eh, I did  _ it,”  _

Ivy wiggled her brows and forced her tea into Harley’s hand. “And?”

“He said he’d do it, a favour to a friend,” 

“Good, didn’t want to have to make him myself,” Ivy stuck out her tongue. “You’ll be fine, the whole thing will be over before you know it,” 

Harley knew it was true but it didn’t make her any happier. The weight of revelations still sat on her shoulders, the things they had shared, and Homecoming was still the last thing she wanted to be doing. 

“I have to go dress shopping tonight with Ma, and then I have cheer and therapy tomorrow,” Harley sighed as she spoke, looking out across the field. “Just want to go back to gym,” 

Ivy turned her body inwards, closing the space between them even more, a hand on Harley’s knee. “And you will go back soon, and I will come watch you whenever you want but - but you have to be patient. Play the games they want you to,”

“Is that what you do?”

“Yeah,” 

“And does it work?”

It was Ivy’s turn to sigh. “It is what it is,” 

_ Would it be too much to ask her to share a little, as well?  _ “This weekend, could we spend some time together, you and I?”

“You and I,” Ivy confirmed with that smirk.

  
  


At school’s end, Harley was actually glad to see her mother, to tell her that her unruly daughter was a little less unruly now that she was a cheerleader with a date to the dance. Ivy had walked her to the car and waved at Ma before saying goodbye. Harley hated goodbyes, especially brief ones in front of parents. 

“Good day?”

Harley shrugged as she got in the car, her eyes still on Ivy. “Got a date,”

“You did?” Ma said with an embarrassing squeal. “That’s great, Harleen, this is great,”

“Yeah, I guess. His name is Johnny, he’s nice enough,” 

Ma’s face was soft and Harley couldn’t quite tell where she was at. “Only a friend?” 

“Yeah, obviously,” Harley replied. “No boys, I remember, don’t worry - and Johnny gets that,”

“So, we need to get this dress then?” Ma kissed Harley’s head and she shook her off. Ivy was still watching, still smiling, pretending to be casually waiting against the wall. 

“Yeah, let’s get the dumb dress,”

“Does she want to come?”

“Huh?” 

Ma screwed up her face as if Harley had said something stupid. “Ivy? Does she want to come shopping?” 

“Oh-,” Harley wasn’t sure what to say. The answer seemed less important than the question. “Do you want her to, Ma?” _Do you?_ _Why is she even really asking?_

“Is that not what girls do these days? Help each other pick dresses? I just thought it’d be ni-,” Ma put her hand on the wheel. 

“It is, it is,” Harley stopped her mother from touching the stick. “She’s just, it’s, I forget these things, and she’s not going to the dance anyway,” 

Ma sighed into a smile, and it was if Harley’s own eyes looked back at her full of pity. “Go ask her then, see if she wants to do silly girly things and get some dinner,” 

“Really?” 

“I’m happy that you have friends, Harley. That you can-,” she sighed again. “Go ask her if you want, okay?” 

_ ‘That you could be normal?’  _

_ At least she had stopped herself from saying it aloud.  _

Ivy was still watching, half looking over the top of a Woolf novel. Harley didn’t answer her mother with anything other than a touch of the hand before unplugging her belt and throwing herself back out in the parking lot. Well, half out, trying to lean coolly against the door as she called to the girl with averted eyes, garnet, green and gorgeous. 

“Hey, Ive, wanna come do girls day?” 

Ma’s mood, or at least the behaviour it inspired, was as enigmatic and unpredictable as Harley’s own. None of which was news in itself but she was of a particularly cryptic, strangely kind, demeanour as they - Ivy, Harley and her mother - spent the afternoon together. Ma took them for coffee, fuelling them for the shopping ahead that Harley was just waiting to complain about. 

Then they hit three shops before Harley found a dress she even wanted to try on. Homecoming sucked. No matter how much Ma and Ivy encouraged her, Harley still felt like literal dogshit in everything she tried on. And neither of them seemed to think it would be okay if she wore jean shorts and Chucks.  _ Horrific _ , Ma had said.  _ Definitely not cheer code _ , Ivy had added with a laugh. 

Ma had questioned Ivy about Johnny, which had worked out well, being that all Harley knew about Johnny was that he was nice and he liked knives. That was probably the least helpful thing Harley could tell her. Ivy knew a lot about Johnny, as she seemed to know all of the school. She knew that his mother had died, that his dad was some kind of scientist, that Johnny was too. Ivy kept her explanation of his chemistry fascination focused on school. She knew that he liked to write, like Ivy herself did, and that she thought he read too much Lovecraft. 

Harley couldn't be quite sure why Ivy and Johnny weren’t friends, when it seemed as if they might get on. They were both science nerds, and the quiet ones at school, and well, they both want to be friends with Harley.  _ Maybe you could bring people together for once, instead of always tearing them apart.  _

It was in the sixth shop that Harley had decided enough was enough and had taken a moment to sit alone on the dressing room floor. And Harley had been longer, more wrapped up in daydream, that she had ever intended, Ivy being sent by Ma to find her. 

“You good in there?” Her soothing voice came from the other side of the curtain. 

“Come in,” Harley replied with a huff.

Ivy snaked past the curtain into the small cubicle. Their first moment alone since they had left school. 

“What’s up? Your mom is losing it a little out there,” Ivy was grinning, so Ma clearly wasn’t  _ actually _ losing it yet. “I like her, you know,”

Harley felt less pleasant. “I look like shit, Ivy,”

“No, no you don’t,” 

The mirror didn’t lie. The black and red dress Harley had on made her look oblong and flowery. 

“Liar,”

“Rude,” Ivy pouted. “I honestly think you look lovely,” she came up behind Harley and laced her arms around her, swaying them together in front of the mirror, as if they had been doing it for a thousand years. “What do you see?”

“Harley and Ivy,”

“And? What do you see when you look at you?”

Harley didn’t want extra therapy but it was nice to know that Ivy cared. 

“A pretender,” 

“Aren’t we all?” 

_ Nobody pretends like you, she should know that by now.  _ “This isn’t very me, this whole thing. Never did anything like this at my old school, that’s why she is making me now,”

Ivy gripped a little tighter. “I know, I’m sorry,”

“Are we okay? After yesterday?” Harley wasn’t sure where they had come from but as she looked at Ivy in the mirror the words simply fell out.

Ivy nuzzled into her shoulder, quiet and clingy. “Yes, like I said earlier, we are okay,” 

“You don’t think I’m a shitty person?”

“No,” she said. “I really don’t,” 

It wouldn't be the last time Harley needed to ask such a question, or the past year would come up, she was sure of it, but she hoped Ivy’s softness remained. 

“Should I just get the dress?”  _ Do you really look that bad? _

“Yeah, do,” Ivy kissed her cheek. “You look cute, I promise. Now go get approval from the impatient lady waiting outside,”

The dress did get Ma’s approval, and as far as Harley could see, so did Ivy. The afternoon was a whirlwind, the conversation out of Harley’s grip as Ivy flattered and flirted away when Ma took them for noodles. Ivy spoke of nerd stuff, and her father’s awful company, and about how oh so smart Harley was in classes they didn’t even actually take together. The way Ma smiled and preened in another girls direction would have usually itched at Harley’s skin. Things weren’t like that with Ivy, everything was refreshing when she was around. 

When it was time to drop Ivy home, the whole mood changed.

Harley had walked her to her ridiculous front gate and whispered a goodbye into her ear as they hugged. Tomorrow always felt so far away, and watching Ivy walk away into her big lonely house was just shitty. 

When Harley had returned to the car, Ma was staring. 

“What?” Harley had asked, jumping into the front seat. 

“Nothing,” Ma replied, but she was a liar. 

The drive home was quiet, the radio playing softly, and Harley’s thoughts full of Ivy and homecoming and Ivy some more. It was when they arrived at the house that things got strange again. Ma locked the doors as she turned off the engine. 

“Shit,” Harley said. “Is this another intervention?” 

“No, no,” 

“Was this afternoon a trick?”  _ You should have seen this coming.  _

“Not a trick, no,” 

“Then unlock the door, Ma,” 

Ma sighed, and pushed back Harley’s hair from her face. “I just want to talk, Harleen. Woman to woman without your father around,”

A knot was beginning to appear in Harley’s stomach, a shake awakening in her hands. “About what?” 

“Are you enjoying school?”

Harley shrugged. She knew that was not the truth of it but she answered anyway. “It’s fine, it’s school,” 

“I’m glad you’ve made friends, that you’re sticking to cheer,” she said. “This year has been hard, for all of us, but especially you,” Ma put a hand to Harley’s shoulder. “And I am proud of ya, for trying,” 

_ It was good to hear. Better than good.  _

“Thanks, Ma,” 

“But I-,”

“Ugh,” Harley muttered, crossing her arms.

“But I  _ do  _ want to talk about something,” 

“What?” Ma looked away, as if she had lost her train of thought.  _ She’s nervous. Why the Hell is she nervous?  _ “Ma?”

“Ivy,” she said, finally turning back to her daughter. “Is Ivy, are you - are you gay now, Harleen?” 

The knot in Harley’s stomach rolled into a fist that was trying to punch its way out. The shake in her hand made her feel like she was having a seizure, or a stroke, or something.  _ It was a trick, it was all a trick.  _

“It’s okay, if you are,” Ma continued. “You have to breathe remember, like they taught you,” 

_ Like they taught you, like the taught you… _

_ Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in… _

“Ma, I-” 

“You can tell me,” she said, her hand on Harley’s cheek. “We promised remember, that you would tell me things this time, and I wouldn’t ‘freak out’, as you say,” 

Harley wanted to say something, she just couldn’t. They were both crying now, if only slightly.

“Look, okay, you don’t have to tell me,” Ma said, her voice comforting. “But you haven’t been back at school very long, you’ve not been back in the world very long. I’m your mother, okay? I’m not stupid. At least, I won’t be again,”

_ She is trying. _

_ Everyone is simply trying.  _

“But I need to know you’re okay, that you’re not going to - that you’re not going to leave again, or get sick without us noticing. If you left again, Harleen, I couldn't take it,” 

“I won’t,” Harley whispered. “I’m sorry, mama,” 

“No, no, my love,” she pulled Harley in. “It’s all good, you gotta trust me, is all,”

“And you, me,”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I have to know that you’re okay though, it’s why I’m always so-”  _ up my ass?  _ “Interested,” Ma said. 

“I’m okay, I promise,”

“So, Ivy?”

“Mm, Ivy,” 

Ma sighed and it rolled into a slight laugh. “I guess it is better than other alternatives. Even if I would prefer it if you hadn’t managed to tangle yourself up with someone so quickly,” 

“I didn’t mean to,” 

“I know, darling. You love too hard sometimes,” 

It wasn’t supposed to be an insult but it definitely felt like one. 

“I’m sorry,”

“Don’t be,” Ma said. “Ivy is sweet, and way above us lowly Quinzel’s,” she kissed Harley’s head. 

“She’s a girl though,”  _ you can never do anything simply. _

“It doesn’t matter. Not to me. You and I, we just need to be honest with each other, like I said,”

“Okay,” Harley agreed, and she meant it. Shock was still rushing through her veins, shock and sorrow and an overwhelming amount of love. “Do you actually like her?”

“Ivy? In comparison to  _ him _ ?” At least Ma didn't spit after talking about him this time.   
“No,” Harley said. “Just as Ivy. I don’t want to compare her to  _ him _ ,” 

Ma smiled, pulling away and picking up her bag off the car floor. “Yes, from what I have seen. I get the feeling she wants to impress me, which, as a mother, is flattering,” 

“She really does,” Harley said. “And her parents, they are total dicks,” 

“I had a feeling,” Ma replied. “Come on, it’s getting cold,” 

Harley smiled at her mother. “Hey, I love you, Ma,” 

“I love you, too. Even if you’re gay now,” 

“That’s not how it works,” she said laughing, stepping out into the street. “That’s just not how it works at all, old lady,”


	12. i am sorry if my traumatized life is an inconvenience to you and your perfect existence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- i know almost nothing about homecoming so enjoy  
> \- thanks as always for supporting this little story and by proxy me

Harley had checked the date off of her calendar with a marker. It was the day before the dance and Harley had officially been in school longer than she had been in hospital over the summer,  _ fuck yeah.  _ Life renewed, life at a new school with new friends, with a new found connection to her parents, had not all been as expected but Harley knew it could have been so much worse. Soon enough she would be back on the mat, and although she hadn’t anticipated it, even though it might not be the safest option, she had Ivy now, too.  _ Take your meds, take a breath and take one day at a time.  _

The week running up to homecoming had been a busy one, and Harley had seen far less of Ivy than she had wanted. They had cheer practice all but one day after school, and though it was nice to see Diana and the others, Harley wished she was in other places every time they ran a routine. Ivy wouldn’t have let her skip even if she had wanted to though. They had spent the weekend together; the Saturday at Harley’s and a few hours of Sunday at Bruce’s with the gang. Ma had done well not to let on to Ivy that she had known anything about them, even if she had popped into Harley’s room to offer snacks one too many times. Every time she did Harley had reminded herself that it was better than bars on the windows. And it wasn’t like they spent all their time making out anyway - although they did do a lot of making out - Harley truly did enjoy Ivy’s clever and concerned company. They had been making their way through sad girl acoustic tracks that Ivy had been desperate to share. The music was fine, if not a little maudlin, but every song felt like some precious part of Ivy she was asking Harley to take care of. 

And so the busy week just kept getting busies, and they hadn’t had all that much time together, and if Homecoming was an irritation to Harley, the return of Ivy’s father was a wound to her. She had been quiet all week because of it, never saying what was really on her mind. Harley’s own demons were so loud, and they had faced them together. Ivy’s had retreated to the shadows where they remained untouched by the light. 

The day before Homecoming was the first day all week that Harley had felt they had really had time to talk. At school, they had classes together; their project was finally beginning to take shape. And lunch was nice, too, as it always was. Ivy had come with Harley to see Johnny to double check their plans, and he had definitely been timid in Ivy’s presence, and then they snuck behind the equipment shed to be alone. They had kissed, and eaten, and kissed again but Harley could feel the ice in Ivy’s veins the whole time, the whispers behind her words.

“Is he really that bad?” Harley had asked eventually, pulling her mouth reluctantly away from Ivy’s own. 

“Huh?”

“Your dad, is he that bad? Bad like-,” 

Ivy knew. “No, not that kind of bad. Different, I guess. Controlling,” it was nice, that she was talking. 

“Why are you so scared?”

Everything around them seemed to go quiet, as even the foliage, the grass and the trees, had all stopped to listen to Ivy.

“It’s my mom, he’s a dick to me, but he-,” she sighed, heavy and sad. “They are both drunks, and he can get, I don’t know, sometimes- and she, she just takes it,” Ivy swallowed, reaching out to Harley again. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,”

“It’s okay,”

“I don’t really want to talk about this, not at school,”

_ Kiss her instead. Don’t ask questions, just fucking kiss her.  _

—————

The afternoon of the game, Ivy seemed quiet, her dad finally having arrived home the night before. A small part of Harley hoped a little of it was jealousy, that Ivy would miss her when she danced with someone else.  _ Stupid.  _ Ma had given Ivy the go ahead to take Harley to the game and back before the dance; she had agreed to take pictures in the evening, in the dress and all the idiocy, but she had given Harley the afternoon.

  
  


It was raining when they got to school, and in her uniform Harley felt cartoonish and uncool next to Ivy. As if dragging her to watch Harley cheer had been embarrassing all along and not no one had told Harley the truth.  _ It’s not you. Don’t be so selfish. _

“Are you okay?” Harley asked when they had parked up, Ivy’s glance faded. “You seem kinda-,”

“I’m an ass,” Ivy chewed on her lip.

“Don’t be silly,”  _ that’s my job. _

“Harley, you’ve been stressing about this day for weeks,” she said, still turned away, still beautiful. 

“And you’ve been terrified of your dad for a lifetime,”

“I’m not scared, I’m angry,” Ivy whispered. Harley took her hand and lay it in her own lap. “I’m angry all the time,”

_ Relatable _ .

“You don’t have to come to a stupid football game,”

Ivy hugged her, forceful and quick enough that Harley didn’t see it coming. 

“I want to go to a stupid football game,” she whispered. “I’m going to be a miserable bitch either way.”

  
  


Selina and Bruce had come too, and Harley felt like she was actually starting to weave herself a net with the new people in her life. People that seemed to actually want to be near her, support her, mock her a little the way friends did. 

“If you care, you’ll do, Harley, I’m just saying,” Selina had linked her arm in to Harley and IvyMe, leaving Bruce to trail them like security.

“I barely even touch Zee in the routine,” Harley replied. “Am I supposed to tackle her?”

“No,” said Ivy. “Please don’t,”

“Why not?” asked Selina.

“Because assault in public is stupid, Kitty,”

Selina wiggled her nose. “So afterwards?”

“Tempting,” Ivy replied, winking. “But we should probably keep Harley out of it,”

Harley did really like her new friends, a bunch of nerds in overpriced clothing

  
  


Ivy had squeezed her hand before the separated; Harley to meet the squad, her friends to the bleachers to watch her. That was when the nerves set it, nerves in places Harley didn’t know that nerves could be in as she was rushed at by Jessica, and rushed even quicker out onto the pre-game field. She barely paid any attention to the lecture both coach and Kara had given them, everyone fading into a mirage around her. It was still raining when they hit the grass, and got into position, Dinah at Harley’s left and Helena to the right. The band was loud and the crowd kind of wild, far more abrasive than one at the average gymnastics competition. Her friends were high in the bleachers, and with a squint Harley could see Ivy watching her, smiling maybe.  _ Why are you so nervous?  _ Harley had performed so many times, in front of so many different people, but the red dot in the crowd made her sweat harder than any of them. She almost missed her first step because she was looking so intently into the crowd. When Harley did take the step all her nerves seemed to drift and the eyes of the crowd, the eyes of one pretty girl, with them. 

  
  


“Hell yeah, go Gotham, baby! That was actually kinda fun,” Selina came in for a hug, boldly strolling into the changing rooms with Ivy by her side, all eyes straight on them. The tiny goth pulled Harley down into her arms and whispered. “You are so much better than the rest of these club-footed wannabes,” then she patted Harley’s ass but, like, in a friendly way. 

“She just likes watching boys hurl that egg,” 

Selina replied loud enough for everyone around them to hear. “Who wouldn’t?”

Ivy winked at Harley and it was more than welcome. The eyes and ears made Harley nervous though, Diana and Jessica, Kara and Zee, even Dinah and Helena, she knew they were all watching. Selina knew it too and the longer they waited, the more likely Harley felt it was that she would pounce, so she rounded her stuff and her friends up as quickly as she could without looking like she was doing it on purpose. 

Bruce had been at his car when they found him, and with another hug or two, and a hi and goodbye, the black draped couple seemed to disappear as fast as they had first appeared. Friend duty done, Homecoming not their thing, Harley could only assume they were off to make out somewhere and she was wildly jealous. Muddy, tired and not wanting to dance, Harley wished she could simply take Ivy home for the evening instead. 

“You want this ride home or not, Arlo?” Ivy was a few steps away, turning towards her car. Harley wanted to suspend the moment a little longer, to share it all, but she nodded and smiled anyway. 

  
  
  


They were giggly the whole ride, neither of them focusing on their impending separation, and when they reached their destination, Ivy pulled up at the end of the street instead of outside the house.

“Gonna make me walk?” Harley asked, awkwardly playing with the edge of her jacket.

Ivy smiled. “No, I wanted to do this,”

Like fire, she spread across the car and reached for Harley gently. Everything about her patient and tender, until their eyes locked, and Ivy knew it to be permission to move in. They kissed, and it was wonderful, perhaps the best yet. Both hot and fast, and sweet and slow, Harley had never felt so needed. 

Ivy broke away eventually to speak, her voice breathless. “You were really good today,”

“Thanks for comin’,”

“Thank you for asking. Selina was right, you don’t move like the rest of them,” Ivy kissed her again, quickly, once on the lips and once on the head. “Now I should get you home, you’ll be late for your ball,”

Harley pulled at the hem of Ivy’s coat, still damp from the rain. “A few more minutes,”

  
  


————————————

Ma was still fumbling with Harley’s wild and positively willful hair when Johnny knocked on the door. She still had a full handful when Harley pulled away to go answer and it hurt like a bitch. 

Dressed in a black suit, definitely a little big for him (which was saying something given his long limbs), Johnny was smiling when Harley greeted him, corsage and flowers in hand. 

“Wow, you look, uh,” he stuttered. 

“Clean?” 

“Pretty, actually,”

Harley blushed.  _ Always the easy target.  _

“Thanks, Johnny,” she said, awkwardly gesturing into the house. “And thank you for doing this, seriously,” 

“We’re gonna have fun,” he said, following her through the doorway and into the house. “Don’t be so nervous,”

_ If only he knew.  _

Ma was like maggots to a corpse when it came to Johnny. His smile clearly was less reminiscent of past mistakes to Harley’s mother than it had been to her, and Johnny was as annoyingly polite as the rest of Gotham Prep so Ma was left unraveled. Harley’s dad was bored and Harley appreciated, appreciated the energy that reflected her own. There were pictures to be taken and Ma was relentless, the endless reminder of where Harley got her inherited erratic behaviours from. Johnny was sweet, though, pandering the embarrassing middle aged woman at every turn. He was doing the work with Harley’s parents that she hadn’t wanted to; she missed Ivy the whole time. 

When they got to the dance, Harley’s stomach was in knots from the get go, weird remnants of Dinah’s party returning in flashes. Johnny had taken her arm from the moment they left the car, though, which was nice. 

Jessica, as always, had found them first, wearing a green slip and a flower in her hair. Another whirlwind in a day of whirlwinds, they barely had time to greet her before she was dragging them into the school hall. The room already smelt like sweat and was covered in tacky twinkling lights. They looked less cheap pinned to Ivy’s plant wall. 

A gang of cheerleaders were waiting for them, only a few kids out on the makeshift dance floor where one of their younger gym teachers was on music duty. 

“Oh good, you’re here,” Diana said looking like a Goddess as always, with Arthur at her side. 

“Finally,” said Zee but Kara nudged her. 

After running through the plan - they would all come on stage to ‘accept the school’s thanks for representing in the game’ but Gotham Prep had no king and queen,  _ it’s weird _ \- they all scattered into different corners of the room, disbursing and leaving Harley alone with Johnny and her anxiety. 

“You wanna dance?”

_ Not really.  _ “Do you?”

Johnny didn’t answer, he just took Harley’s hand and pulled her out onto the floor, bopping to the music as he went,  _ a total nerd.  _ He seemed to have no plans to get cooler either; as soon as they reached the centre of the room, Johnny started to shake down like a drunk dad at a wedding. He was trying to make Harley laugh and she did, clasping at her face. 

“Come on, Harley,” he said with a wiggled brow and a boyish smile. “Let’s show them,”

“They’ll all laugh,”

Johnny moved closer. “Nah, they can’t, they like my stuff too much,”

Harley couldn’t argue with that. She missed Ivy, and felt stupid for being so damn obsessive, but Ivy had told her to have fun.  _ Have fun then.  _ The music was terrible but Harley did her best to move anyway. A snorkel, the robot, Jackson inspired steps, Johnny and Harley spent an hour trying to out shame each other before the squad was called on stage. 

And the whole stage thing was worse than any dance off could have been. Harley hated the silence that came as the Principal gave a speech and they all stood like lemmings behind him, she hated the false heroics even more. It felt like the Principal was simply lecturing all the non footballers and cheer team on how little they did for the school. Selina would have hissed and kicked if she had had to listen to the principal thank Kara and Zee for their ‘specifically helpful presence.’ When the dancing came again, it was no longer an embarrassment but a gift. Harley was almost euphoric by the time Hungry Like A Wolf was playing.

They spent a fair amount of time talking, too. And the spitball-knife wielding creature Harley had met all those weeks ago was cleverer than he wanted to admit, hiding a brain behind a charm that didn’t quite fit him. When they sat laughing over a green shit tasting punch, Johnny told her all about how he, Arthur and Ollie had been friends in elementary, how Helena had been his first kiss, and how his friend Ed had been his second. They laughed about their teachers, and Johnny told her how pretty his mom had been and how she read him comics when he was little. About how selling was a good way to keep his dad out of his business, how it gave him something to do with his hands. Harley didn’t know how her father, how she would have coped, if she had lost Ma when she was little. He even asked about Ivy, and rolled his big brown eyes when Harley acted as if she had no idea what he was talking about. Having friends at all was a plus but having a boy close by that didn’t make Harley feel as if she was on edge all the time was truly refreshing. Selina had been feistier, and far more handsy, and she was no threat at all.  _ Boys are different. _

When the teachers stuck Bryan Adams on at the end of the night to wrap everyone up with a slow dance, it was too much for both of them, and they laughed at the footballers clumsily dragging their partners around their floor to music made for wine moms. Then they took to the curb outside the school instead. 

“You don’t have to hang around,” Harley assured him. “Thank you for this,”  _ this whole damn charade. _

“Told you it could be fun, can’t let the cool kids have all the rites of passage,” 

He was right. Harley knew she took everything too seriously, or simply never seriously enough. 

“It was,” she put an arm around his shoulder. “And we’re not even wasted,”

Johnny laughed, pulling out his silly tie finally. “Ivy definitely picking you up?”   
“She said so,” Harley replied. “You don’t have to stay, honestly. You’ve done enough, and Jessica’s still about somewhere, I’ll find her until Ive shows up,” 

“Okay,” he said, sucking in his lips. “Thanks again for not thinking I’m a total freak,”

Harley took a hand he had offered her to stand. “I mean, you are but me too, y’know?”

“Yeah, well that then,” he didn’t seem offended. “Can I hug you, before I go?” Johnny seemed to lose the charm for a moment, the way Harley might, she could recognise it.  _ He wants to know if that’s what normal people do.  _

Harley reached up and kissed his cheek, then moved in for a hug. “Thanks again, Crane,” 

“You too, Quinzel. Oh, and tell your mom I offered to drop you home, okay?”

Harley nodded, smiling to herself. Johnny hit the ground running, long legs carrying him at ridiculous speed, at a run from bullies or the cops kind of speed, and then the wait began. 

  
  


There was no way of telling how long Harley had been sitting outside school, how long she had been playing with bits of asphalt and dirt on the floor, but when she looked up, there were only a couple of cars left in the lot. Only a few cars around and none of them Ivy’s. Harley didn’t want to panic.  _ You are not going to fucking panic.  _

Not reentering the school to find Diana hadn’t mattered much; Diana had found her, eventually. Still looking like a marble statue, Head Girl Prince was one of the last to leave the dance, with Jessica on her arm. Harley hadn’t actually wanted to see them, she had totally been lying to Johnny. They approached her anyway, greeting her softly.

“Did Jonathan not take you home?” Diana asked, hand on her hip and eyes scanning the parking lot.

“Uh, no,” Harley replied, standing up so they weren’t so towering. “I sent him off,”

“Your parents coming?” Jessica was shivering as she spoke.  _ It is cold, it has been raining all day.  _

“Yeah, no, I was,-” Harley felt exposed, she could feel Diana’s eyes. The ones she wore as a friend and the ones she wore as someone who had once cared for Ivy. “I was waiting for Ivy but-”  _ her parents, her dad, her- don’t panic, not yet.  _

“She hasn’t shown?” Diana’s voice was urgent.

“Is that weird?” 

Diana sighed, looking to Jessica for a flash of a second. “I mean, she never bailed on me,” 

Harley didn’t know if that made her feel any better. 

“She’ll come,”

“It’s late, Harley,” Jess said. 

“I can giv-,”

“Ivy will come, Diana, she  _ said  _ she would come,” 

_ Do you believe it? _

“What time was she supposed to be here?” Diana asked. 

“Quarter past,” 

They both sighed at her and Harley wanted the ground to swallow her as they did, she could feel the red spreading across her cheeks.

“It’s almost on the hour,” Jessica said, a hand on Harley’s shoulder. “It’s cold and they’ll be turning the lights off soon,” 

_ Almost an hour. _

“Your parents will worry,” 

Harley just looked at them.  _ Where the fuck are you, Ive?  _

“I’m scared,” she admitted, eventually and pathetically quietly. 

Diana took hold of her. “Let me take you home,” she said. “We both know Ivy would want me to take you home,” 

They didn’t need Ivy’s approval, but Harley knew her friend was right. Her stoic nature made her so efficiently Greek, and sometimes it was hard to argue with that. Everything Diana said was always so correct and yet she never patronised, not unintentionally anyway. 

“I don’t know,” Harley said and she meant it in every way possible. 

“Harley, darling,” Diana said, no longer only a goddess of beauty, but one of stern protection.. “Get in my fucking car,  _ please, _ ”

The ten minute ride to Jessica’s house was the easiest part of the ride. Harley really did like Jessica, she tried harder than any of them, and was genuinely sweet - she had made Harley sit up front. Once Jessica was gone, Diana jumped right into the dirt.

“I’m sure she’s okay,” 

Harley was jealous; she didn’t like hearing Diana talk about ‘ _her’_. _You’re an idiot. An obsessive weirdo._ All Harley could do was think of Ivy, of all the horrible things that might have happened to her, about how dead she could be. “Hope so,” 

“You have been distant, since the party, since you got wi- since you started hanging out with Ivy,” Diana’s accent seemed to get stronger when she was down. “We’re still friends, right?”

Harley sighed. “Yeah, I think so. I’m just not very good at it, having friends, yknow?”

“And Selina hates us,” Harley shot her friend a look. “It’s okay, she’s allowed to,” 

“What happened?” 

Diana kept her eyes on the road but raised her brow, arched and inquisitive. “Did Pam not tell you?”

_ Pam. _

“No,” Harley replied, trying not to huff. “Not really, she said it wasn’t her story to tell,” 

“Well, it’s not really mine either but I’m not your girlfriend,” 

_ Neither is Ivy, not really, not yet. And she hasn’t showed up. She had promised and she didn’t show up.  _

“So tell me, Princess Di, if we’re friends. Everyone seems so weird about it,” 

Diana laughed. “Do not underestimate the drama of that school, I did and it was a mistake,” 

“Is that why you broke up with Ivy?” 

They were getting closer to Harley’s home now, although the conversation was just getting started. 

“Ivy broke up with me,” Diana replied, her voice low, her hands tight on the wheel. “As far as I recall it. Not that I can blame her,” 

“Okay, well park up at the bottom of my street and tell me everything,”

And so Diana did, and where Harley had sat hours before with Ivy, she sat with Ivy’s ex girlfriend instead.  _ Life is weird.  _ Harley didn’t want to make her parents worry more than they had to, and she hoped they were still holding out hope that she was having too much healthy fun to make it home quite on time. And Harley wanted answers, if she couldn’t have Ivy when she wanted her most, she would have those at least. 

“So, Selina just came into everything at a strange time, and I guess, from the start, people were kind of shitty to her,” Diana was going as if she had been wanting to share her side of the story for a while. “And Ivy and I, were kind of,” 

“Fucking?” 

“Together, all summer, our mom’s made us hang out, and yeah,” 

“So Kara messes this up, how?”

Diana rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t just Kara, she’s not evil,”  _ still up for debate.  _ “Okay, so I hadn’t been at the school long either, I had only started the end of spring before, and so Ivy and I get back after summer and my mum had told me I could throw a party,” 

The accidental ‘ _ mum’ _ made Harley smile. “And you and Ivy throw a party-,”

“No, that might have been a different party. I got on the team that year, and I was on the student council,” 

“Oh, so you threw the party with your new friends instead of your girl,”  _ that was the opposite of a Harley Quinzel problem. Too focused on friends instead of lovers.  _

“Shitty, I know,” Diana replied. “But we each had our friends, right? At least, Ivy had a new friend when Selina joined the school. And she always had Bruce,” 

Harley knew Ivy now though. She wouldn’t have wanted new Selina or old Bruce, Ivy would have wanted Diana.  _ Do you think she’s at home, thinking about you? _

Diana continued. “Selina and Ivy got close quickly, we were seeing each other after school but less, I guess. Things at school were busy and people, people just drift sometimes,” 

“But that’s not it though,” Harley said, a little spice behind her tongue, her dress starting to itch. “What did you do at the party?”

“Okay,” Diana said. “But stop interrupting. We have the party, the team is coming, Ivy and Selina are coming, everyone is coming. And my mom has one rule, no one in her room. It would be weird that anyone would go in there but also she has so much jewellery, and it’s expensive and Italian,”

Something in Harley’s chest told her she now knew where the story was heading and she really fucking hoped she was wrong. 

“And of course, something goes missing,” Diana continued. “It had been a really good night, Selina and Ivy were hanging out with the team, everything was fine but I panicked when I noticed someone had been in my mom’s room. Then it just, it got stupid,”

The rest of the story wasn’t stupid but it was a mess. Diana had indeed panicked, and gone into head girl mode, rounding up every partygoer and telling them all of the situation. When no one fessed up, fingers started to get pointed, when one was pointed in Selina’s direction, it stuck. 

“She was new, so that’s why, I think,”  _ and in foster care, and black, and not rich like, you arseholes, not actually.  _ The whole thing made Harley so angry for Selina, just as it made Selina seem to make all the more sense. “But Ivy had been with her the whole night and was adamant that it hadn’t been Selina. And after the party, my mom found out and took it to the school, and I don’t know who, honestly I don’t, but someone told the principal they thought it was Selina,” 

_ Kara? Zee? One of the boys? Diana, herself? Does it matter? _

“Ivy must’ve been pissed,” 

“She was, and so was Selina, and her foster parents even more so. After that, I guess battle lines had been drawn, and Ivy and I, we just didn’t survive it,” 

Harley was glad they hadn’t. She hated the story but with every horrible fiber of her being she was glad that Ivy and Diana were no longer together. She wanted to be Diana’s friend, she treated Harley like a person, but she wanted Ivy, too. 

_ Where are you? _

“Friends over her, like I said, that’s how she probably saw it,” 

Diana’s voice cracked when she went to speak again, only a little but Harley still felt it. “She was my friend first, my  _ best  _ friend,” 

“And now?” 

“You tell me, Harley,” the tall girl, elegant and unsettled, pulled herself back together after a momentary lapse. “That’s it, that’s the story. Come on, we both have curfews we are late for,”

They hugged when Harley left the car, leaning over the centre, and Diana tried to reassure her Ivy was okay. Harley did her best to believe it, she tried her best to keep the thought in her head as she walked up to the front door, as she knocked and her Ma answered.  _ Her parents are bad, but Ivy will be okay. Ivy is okay. She didn’t leave you on purpose. Ivy wouldn’t do that. _ But there was no reassurance in the world big enough to soothe the eruption, and as soon as Harley’s mother opened the door with a smile, Harley collapsed in her arms like a toddler.  __ Every part of her body hurt, ever muscle contracted and every bone ached.  _ She wouldn’t just forget you, right? _


	13. rome. by all means. rome!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- hope you are all well, love always  
> \- sorry if i haven't replied to your comment yet, i will soon!!!

There had been chaos all weekend; a silent Ivy and an embarrassing amount of tears. 

Harley had cried in her mother’s arms when she first got home, as she had cried herself to sleep Homecoming night. Ma had tried to comfort her the next morning after therapy, after Harley had sat blank faced across from Dr Parze and declared everything fine. No one was convinced. Ivy wouldn’t answer the phone. Ma had tried to remind Harley that she was still a child, that Ivy was still a child, that sometimes parents say no and their children listen. She said that everything would be okay and that she was simply glad Diana had been there. Ma was so calm it was unsettling. Harley had yelled at her mother that she didn’t know that, that she couldn't possibly understand. “U _ nderstand what? What's it like to lay in bed at night worried about the whereabouts of someone you care about?”  _ Ma had replied,  _ “no, I obviously know nothing of that, Harleen.” _ That had only made Harley cry all the more. 

When Ivy still wouldn’t answer the phone that evening there was nothing left for Harley to do but retreat to her bedroom, where she stayed until school Monday morning listening to ‘Crimson and Clover’ on repeat.  _ Dramatic, selfish, pathetic and utterly alone.  _

  
  


Pamela Isley, wrapped neatly within a winter coat and woolly knotted scarf, was waiting for her when she did get to school. Ma had put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and waved at Ivy before she gently shoved Harley out of the car and drove away quickly. 

Ivy looked sad but she still offered Harley a smile as they awkwardly approached each other . 

“Hey, Arlo,” Ivy offered, her voice small and tender. as soon as she spoke they both cracked. 

Harley grabbed the taller girl and pulled her into a hug with the weight of her whole body. To touch her was enough. 

Ivy spoke into her hair, her breath as warm as her embrace. “Harley, I’m so, so sorry,” 

When they pulled away, Ivy hid behind her hair. 

“It’s okay,” Harley replied, and it was.  _ the relief of seeing her, of knowing she is okay.  _ “I was worried about you,”

Distinctively and together, they moved away from the school doors to a quiet corner away from as many other students as they could.

“I’m sorry, that I left you, I never meant to,” 

“Ive, I know,”  _ mostly.  _ “Are you okay?” 

“Yes,” Ivy said. “No. I missed you,”

Harley leant forward and tucked a strand of Ivy’s hair behind her ear. When her finger touched Ivy’s temple, the girl winced. 

“Shit, sorry, I-,”  _ what the fuck. _ Harley moved her finger back, softer now, and circled a grey purple bruise beneath burning hair. “Tell me what happened,” 

“It was an accident,” 

Harley almost screamed. Ma was right,  _ this feels fucking terrible.  _ “Ivy, please,”

“Actually though, it actually was, Harley,” 

“You can talk to me,”

“I know,” she said, still hiding beneath her scarf and her hair. “But after school, Arlo, please,”

They didn’t talk properly until after school so everything that came before the end of day was weird.  _ You expect everyone to be as emotional as you.  _ Only having one class together and spending lunch with Bruce and Selina, Harley and Ivy didn’t spend much if it alone either. Bruce had let Harley call Ma on his cell to tell her not to pick her up and even she had sounded remarkably calm. Everything rolled on as if it was a typical day from a few weeks ago, as if Homecoming had never happened. Six hours felt more like sixty. Seeing Johnny in English was a highlight though, with his excitement to reminisce about their evening, to plan their next outing. When he asked how the weekend had gone, Harley never told him Ivy hadn’t shown. 

When they were finally dismissed for the day, Harley had practically run to Ivy’s art class where she knew she would be, a small part of her scared Ivy might vanish again. 

She hadn’t though, and with clay dust on the end of her nose Ivy had greeted Harley with a calming smile.

“Hey,” she said meeting Harley in the doorway, bumping their bodies against each other side by side. “Wanna come get high with me?”

  
  


Harley wasn’t really in the mood to smoke, not when she had to head home so readily and look her mother in the eye, but Ivy seemed to need it so Harley was happy to keep her company. They were sat at the top of an unstable half pipe watching a couple of boys kick a ball round on the field nearby. Ivy had driven them out to another run down park in the middle of a part of town Harley hadn’t been too. When they were young, Harley and her brother had spent many a Sunday afternoon failing to skate on pipe’s just like the one she hung her legs over.  _ Everything would be different if he was still here. _

“Thank you,” Ivy said, pulling Harley to Earth, as she lit a banana shaped joint. As they sat together watching Gotham skies pass them by. 

“For?” 

“Not making me talk at school. Fuck people, you know? But for not hating me either,” she said with an exhale. “I’m so fucking sorry,”

_ Could you even? _

“Its not your fault, Ive,” Harley put her head on Ivy’s shoulder; it was stupid to not be touching. “I’m just glad you’re here now. I was worried about you,” 

Ivy’s arm came around her back and she pressed them together. “Sorry for scaring you. It was an accident, mostly. I wouldn’t lie to you about that,”

“How even?”

“He was,” she sighed, straightening the edge of Harley’s beanie. “They were fighting, like they do when they’re drunk, stumbling and fighting and sometimes, sometimes I just can’t,” Ivy’s voice was raw in the cold, as she smoked and as she raged. The image of her stood at the top of the staircase cowering like a child watching her parents go at it,  _ an ugly image.  _

Harley felt her own arm curl around herself for a moment and she wasn’t quite sure why.

Ivy continued. “It's like, I know someone is going to get hurt - I  _ knew _ it was going to happen - but I never thought it’d be me,”

_ The passion, then the rot, then the shame.  _ Harley knew what it felt like to be trapped inside a house full of knives. 

“Did you get in the middle?”

“For the first time, and the last. You know, it was kind of funny afterwards. Not _ funny _ but I’ve never seen him so panicked. My dad. As if for a second, when he shoved and I fell, that he was worried what I would do back,”

_ Jay had never panicked.  _

“What did you do?”

“Nothing, I fucking choked too,” Ivy had somehow managed to drain half of her smoke. “He scattered, but he locked up the security as he went,” she laughed the way you had to sometimes, when things were really bad. “We couldn’t get out until next morning. He came back, unlocked the system and left us both flowers, the sick fuck,” 

_ She could have come to see you the day after then _ , one intrusive voice in Harley’s head said,  _ don’t be a selfish bitch,  _ said another.

“Ivy, I’m sorry,”

“Shit happens, but thank you,”

Harley was pretty sure shit didn’t just happen, she was pretty sure that was the lesson of the whole last year of her life. “How's your mom?”

“Last time I saw her she was in her lounge with a bottle of scotch and that weird auction tv,”

“Did you not see her, like the next day?” Harley cared about Ivy’s mom, she truly did, but she also didn’t give a shit at all.  _ Not right now.  _

“No, I-,” Ivy stopped suddenly.  _ Stop trying to be clever. You’re not clever.  _ “I wanted to come see you, the next day, I did,”

They weren’t so close anymore, they were looking at each other  _ and she’s close to tears. _

“Why didn’t you?” 

“It’s hard,”

Harley didn’t want to be angry,  _ you’re not angry at her _ , but her blood began to run red hot. “I have told you hard things,”  _ the worst things. _

Ivy gave her a look that said she was caught in Harley’s words. “I don’t want to be bad for you, Harley,” 

“Bad?”

Their hands came together in Ivy’s lap. “You trusted me, you told me you were sick and I said I wouldn’t hurt you,” 

“ _ Don’t _ ,” Harley could feel a rough lump rise in her throat.

“This is a lot, I am a lot, and you mean too much to m-“

“I may be sick, Ivy, but I can make my own decisions. I’m not a child and I’m sober and - and I’m happy,”  _ if happiness is even a tangible thing it is here, with her.  _

“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that,” Ivy took her hands and put them to Harley’s face.  _ fucking freezing.  _ “I want to keep you safe because I want to, not because you need a damn sitter,” 

“Are you going to do what  _ he  _ did?

“No,” Ivy said quickly, squinting.  _ Those fucking eyes. _ “Never,”

“Then don’t compare it, don’t compare us to that,” it was dramatic but the moment required it. And well, Harley was dramatic.

“We still have to be careful with each other,”

“I know that, trust me but truthful too, Ive,” Harley knew she couldn’t say it but would die if Ivy left her. “Ya don’t have to be so damn mysterious all time, not with me. You can tell me anything,” 

_ It’s kind of nice to not be the one in trouble all the time.  _

“I’m sorry,” Ivy whispered, bringing their foreheads together. “You’re my girl and I’m sorry,”

Harley kissed her, the taste of tears and smoke on Ivy’s lip. Nothing about it was pretty but perhaps it was a good thing. Perhaps Ivy needed to be a little less pretty, perhaps Harley needed to let her. 

“If you’re scared, you’ve gotta tell me,” Harley replied as soft as she could, the echoes of her mother’s voice in her own mind. 

“I will,” Ivy said eventually.  _ She is always a little bit scared. Everyone is always a little bit scared.  _ “Homecoming, you haven’t even told me about it.  _ Shit _ . Crane do his job? Get those weird long legs out on the dancefloor?”

“Johnny was good. We had fun actually, I think,”

“You think?” Ivy laughed lightly.

“Fine, we did have fun, I had fun,” 

“Good,” Ivy said sincerely. “I know you were stressed, I’m sorry,”

“Like ya said, it was fine,” at least, until it wasn't.

“Not too much though, I hope. Not with Johnny,”

Harley chewed on her lip to contain a grin. “Why? Would that make you jealous?”

“Ineffably so, but yes,”

_ What does that even mean?  _

“You’re strange sometimes,”

“Thank you,” Ivy said, half a question. She took the last remaining viable toke of her joint and put the end in her pocket like a nerd.  _ Strange like that.  _

“It’s a good thing. Like how ya told me I’m strange,” 

“If you say so, Arlo,” Ivy took her hand, lacing together fingers rigid from the cold. “He got you home?”

_ Ugh _ . Harley knew it was fine but she still didn’t want to talk about Diana. Not to Ivy. It felt exposing.

“Diana and Jess, they dropped me back,”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “At least you got home,”

There was no point keeping the rest of it. Harley took a deep breath. “She told me, I asked maybe, about Selina,”

“Bet she played it down as fucking usual,” Ivy scoffed.

“How so?” a  _ genuine question.  _

“Diana just doesn’t get it, at least she pretends not to,” her brow was furrowed, truly annoyed. “Selina had only been here five minutes but they almost ruined her whole life. She had been in trouble before and her foster parents fought to keep her out of one of those stupid group houses, even though she hated them back then. They got her into school and then Hippolyta, and all those idiots, they almost fucked it. They have no idea what they almost took from her,”

Harley squeezed Ivy’s hand. “I’m sorry,”

“They should be sorry, and to Selina specifically,”  _ she’s right.  _ “But you, Harley, you should still be friends with Diana, and do cheer. Selina quit eventually. You should let it be, that's how to get them,”

Ivy was hot when she was ruthless. And Harley would let it be, even if she  _ needed  _ desperately to know who had actually taken the bracelet, or whatever it was. Harley was nosey but she wouldn’t actually tell Ivy that. 

“You should be friends with Johnny,”

“Ew, really?”

Harley smiled. “Yeah, I’m gonna make you guys hangout sometime,”

“Please don’t do that,” Ivy said but she was definitely smiling too. 

  
  
  


When they finally got back into Ivy’s car, when it was dark and icy and clear, things felt different. Like they had arrived separately, even though they hadn’t, but now they were leaving together. Harley couldn’t let it stop there, she refused to. 

“Come home with me, tonight,”

Ivy scoffed. “I would like that but it's a school night, and you have already managed to wangle more out of your mother than I ever anticipated,”  _ oh, you haven’t told her.  _ “Does she hate me, by the way, your Ma?”

“No, Ive, of course not. She thought I was being sensational actually,” Harley replied. “She would want you to stay over, if we just told her about your pa-,”

“We can’t, Arlo,” Ivy’s made a face as they looked at each other, her eyes wide and her mouth open.  _ Shit.  _ “Oh god, what have you already told her?”

“Not much,” Harley squirmed. “Just that your parents are dicks and t-that, and that-“

“Oh no, you didn’t,” Ivy’s face turned the same shade as her hair. 

“I didn’t mean to, she figured it out and I promise she won't tell anyone, if that's what you're worried about,” 

Ivy half laughed, a face full of anticipation that Harley hadn’t seen before. “Dude, I’m worried your Ma is going to think I’m a sex pest or something. A bad influence, shit honestly,”

“Pfff,”  _ as if.  _ “My parents are well aware that I’m the fuck up, my mom definitely thinks I’m going to corrupt you if anything,” 

“Harley,”

“Please, just come home for the night,” she begged. Harley was never beyond begging, beyond a fluttering of the eyes. “Be with someone who gives a shit about you. I think I’ll go even crazier if I have to spend tonight thinking about you on your own. Your dad is gone anyway, right?” 

Ivy nodded. "Yeah, I think, but my mom,”   
“You can call her from mine. And fuck it, if she takes it that bad and calls the cops, its not like she knows where I live. They’ll tell her to wait a day, at which point you’ll be back at school,” 

“You know,” Ivy said. “It’s both unsettling and sexy how little you care for authority sometimes,” 

_ Big trouble in a little package, that’s what Pa used to call you.  _

“Is that a yes?” 

“Yes, okay,” Ivy said with a sarcastic eye-roll. “Let’s go back to yours,” Ivy leant in briefly and kissed Harley’s cheek. “And I guess I’ll just curl up and fucking die every time I have to look your mother in the eye,” 

  
  


Ma came to the door to greet them before they had even finished parking, standing with a hand on her hip but a smile on her face. Ivy awkwardly played with her keys and hid beneath her scarf again. Harley tried her best at a reassuring smile. 

Ma hugged Harley first but she hugged Ivy harder.  _ She’s also happy you’re not the one with the drama. _

“Coming in for dinner, girls?”

“Hell yeah,”

“Harleen-,”

“Sorry, Ma, I’m literally famished,”

“And I’m,” Ivy's voice was strong but she looked at her feet. “I’m sorry about not being there, Mrs Quinzel, for Harley,” 

Ma smiled. “She got home safe,” she said, and she stroked Ivy beneath the chin for a moment. Harley was beginning to see shades of her mother she had never seen before. Whether it was sanity inspired, or the fact Harley was growing up, she kind of liked it. 

“Can Ive stay? I know it's a school night but we’ll go to bed at a good time and we’ll get there early tomorrow,” if Harley was close to crossing the line, she was about to find out. Ma simply arched an eyebrow. “Please,  _ please _ , Ma,”

“Alright, alright,” she said with a friendly huff. “I guess it’ll be nice not having to drop you off in the morning. For a night, a test run, okay?”

They both nodded - Ivy blushed too - and so fucking excited for the win, Harley didn’t even sarcastically remind her mother that she wouldn’t have to drive her kid to school everyday if she hadn’t sold her kid’s damn car.

  
  


Dues were paid when they were forced to not only eat dinner with Harley’s parents but play Scrabble too. And though Harley worried the whole time that it was silly, and maybe a little unintentionally insensitive, to force Ivy into family game night, she seemed to mostly enjoy it. Pa was both upset and impressed that a teenager had beaten him at the game; Harley had never managed it. Then Ma made them watch Roman Holiday (again) and Pa only made it halfway through (again) before Harley’s mother was dragging him off to bed. 

“Don’t stay up late, please,” she told them as she left the living room. 

They sat silently in the dark for a while, facing forward like Harley’s parents were still awkwardly sitting across the room. Then Ivy made contact first, laying her hand out open on the sofa between them, waiting for Harley’s to meet her. As the TV became nothing but background noise, their fingers curled together where they had once grazed. Ivy smiled.  _ Smirks. _

“Did- did you want to go to bed?” 

  
  
  
  
  


Harley was happy to be alone again, alone with Ivy, alone in the comfort of her bedroom.  _ Hope she doesn’t notice the tears stains on the sheets. _

“Sit with me?” Harley said lounging backwards on the bed. 

Ivy answered by joining her, sweet and sad beneath the shadows. “Thank you, Harley,”

“For?”

“Being, I guess. For asking me over. For forgiving me for everything,” Ivy whispered as Harley played with her perfect red painted hands. 

“It's not about that,” Harley said, her eyes on Ivy’s lips. “We can help each other. You’ve helped me, like, so much,”  _ it’s not like people usually stay once they find out the real shit. _

“And you, I,” 

“Harley and Ivy?” 

“Harley and Ivy,” 

_ Breathe, breathe, breathe.  _

There was something raw reaching out from within and Harley couldn’t fight it. 

“We should kiss, and stuff,” she said, and even in the low light Ivy’s cheeks went pink. 

It had been a long day.  _ It has been a long year.  _

No, there was no fighting it anymore, and Harley didn’t want to, all she wanted was Ivy.  _ All of her in every way.  _

They went slowly at first, a soft fumble as they kissed deep. Ivy was safe, and precious, and though Harley would never forsake that she wanted more.  _ Need her uninterrupted. Need her naked.  _

“Harls,” the voice was desperate and kind, a hand gripping Harley’s hip. “Do you wa-,”

“Yeah,” Harley said, wanting desperately to sink. “Yes,”  _ please.  _

Ivy looked at her for a moment and Harley felt herself literally gasp before they crashed into each other again, shuffling up the bed and pulling at clothing as they went.

Everything after that was both a blur lost to time and a vision seared into Harley’s memory. 

_ This is how it is supposed to be _ . 

Ivy was unlike anyone Harley had ever been near, unlike anyone who had ever touched her. They found new ways to move together, be together,  _ know one another,  _ that Harley had never thought possible. Ivy leaving invisible kisses all over Harley’s skin. Quietly, messily and far from perfectly, they learnt about one another and laughed as they did. Everything give and take and give some more, they were erasing the weight of all their fuck ups, as they loved someone who was desperate to love them back. 

_ Love. _

_ Fuck.  _

Everything was a blur but in the best fucking way. 

They were both giggly, sweaty and where they wanted to be. Most of all, Ivy was satisfying to spoon. 

“Are you okay?” Ivy whispered, as she shuffled her weight back into Harley’s body, interlinking their fingers together across her own stomach. 

“Uhm, definitely,” Harley replied.  _ Real cool.  _ “You?”

“Mmm,” it was an honest noise. 

“Are you sure, Ivy?”

“Mmm,”

“I’ve never,”  _ is this normal?  _ “Not like that, that far, with a girl,”  _ or with your parents asleep down the hall. “ _ Was I-?”

“You are good, Harlequin,” Ivy whispered like a song. “Perfect, even,” she raised Harley’s fingers to her mouth and kissed them.

_Remember this. Memorise it for when things are bad again._ Harley’s eyes were betraying her, a yawn escaping, but she couldn’t get enough of the fact that Ivy was actually there. _Beautiful and in your bed._ _Don’t waste it._

“Then did you maybe wanna do it again?” 


	14. a night of frolic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- sorry this took so long, next one will be quicker if it kills me

“You’re spending way too much of your free time with a cheerleader to not be expanding your social circle,” Selina said, as beautiful as ever, hiding beneath unnecessary sunglasses below a grey winter sky. Selina who was on thin ice but skating it like a pro.

“Leave me outta it, please” Harley didn’t much like the squad either.  _ Or Ivy’s annoyed pout.  _ Although, the rest didn’t seem too bad, she would have to admit. 

“They hate us, Selina,” Ivy’s voice was still.

“We hate them, it’s different. You know every single one of them is desperate to see Billionaire Brucie’s house - sorry, babe, you know they say it - this is how we flip it,” 

Bruce put his arm around Selina as they stretched across the school grass. “Do I get a say?”

Apparently Ivy and Bruce had spent every Hallowe’en together since they were six. This year Selina was determined to throw a party.  _ A real party.  _ A party Ivy had objected to at every turn.

“You had a say last night, and you said if Ivy agreed then this year we could throw a  _ real  _ party,”

“Sorry, Ivy,” Bruce said, hiding beneath his fringe. “I did say that,” 

Ivy huffed. “Suspiria and bean bowls  _ is  _ a real party,”

Harley took her hand, she didn’t care if their friends poked them for it. 

“We have to erase that first one, show them what they missed out on, who they fucked with,”

“There is no gain for us, we just ruin the best night with the worst people,” Ivy replied.

“Please, Ivy,” Selina said, her voice honest and calm. “Trust me,”

“No,” Ivy said.

“Pammy,” Selina was both sarcastically fluttering her eyes and crawling her fingers up Ivy’s arm. “We deserve to show off, we deserve to not be social pariahs unless we choose to,”

Harley wanted it to stop. 

“I hate people,”

Selina rolled her eyes. “And I don’t? We all hate people, I hate them enough to want to make them jealous,”

Harley shared a look with Bruce, and then Ivy. “If it's bad, we can bail,” she said.

“I thought you were staying out of it,  _ Arlo _ ,”

“You can hide in the main house, you’ll be staying over anyway,”

Ivy huffed again and harder. “Betrayal, Wayne,” she squeezed Harley’s hand. “All of you, really? 

“Yes? Is that a yes?” 

“Fine,”

Selina squealed and kissed Ivy’s miserable face. “Thank you, thank you, I promise, this is a good thing,”

After that, it never became an argument. Luckily neither of them would let it get there, but Ivy still wasn’t exactly happy about the extended invites. Invites that Harley had to offer out awkwardly at practice; Diana’s leadership a saving grace for once. She had taken over and made Kara put on a smile. 

Selina had gone organising crazy, Ivy wanted to avoid it, Bruce too and Harley was too excited for the party to even want it to be an issue.  _ A night on our terms.  _ She was e xcited to show Ivy off a little, to not pass out this time. There would be candy and beer and a very pretty girl in a sexy outfit to dance with, it was supposed to be great.  _ Gotta convince her though.  _ Ivy had said it wasn’t about Diana, or any of the fucking others, that it was simply about principle. _And she's lying._

“Selina needs others' validation,” Ivy said, arms spread across Harley’s bed dramatically.  _ Don’t we all? _ “She’s terrified of being the bad guy,”

“And you like it,” Harley asked, stroking Ivy’s hair. “Being the bad guy?”

“Worst roles to play. I refuse to be a sycophant. You get pulled into it and you don’t even realise it has happened,”

Ivy was lonely, though she would never admit it. Her reaction was also definitely a little about Diana, about the whole shambles of the first party, about Selina’s plan for the next. Diana had pulled her in, as Ivy had reeled in Harley, and then let her go.  _ She still hurts, like you still hurt.  _ The party would be a sound distraction from Ivy’s parents though, and a welcome escape from Harley's room where they spent most of their time.

Harley poked Ivy’s ribs. “Well, you’re a good guy to me,”

“Don’t be cheesy,” Ivy replied, jerking away and trying to hide her grin. 

Ivy had been sad for over two weeks, like deeply and obviously sad, the type of sad that kept her out of reach. Harley hated it, she hated that she couldn’t help and she hated the reflection. Ivy had been staying at Harley’s half the time, as her mother ignored her for the other. Her father was still awol, and so was Ivy’s mind.  _ She needs the fun and freedom of a damn party. She needs to breathe. _

“I’ll keep the cheerleaders in check, and you’ll look cute and we’ll have a good time. A dumb party brought us together in the first place, right? An anniversary of sorts,”

“You’re _really_ cheesy today,” Ivy said with a smirk, rolling Harley into her bed and kissing her. Harley returned the kiss, faster and harder,  _ for there are lots of ways to be persuasive. _

Ma always loved Hallowe’en, regardless of the religious irony, stacking the kitchen full of treats for local riff raff. When Harley was young,  _ when you still had a brother,  _ Ma would make them dress up in matching costumes. It was Ivy’s turn this year and Harley’s mother was in her element - even if her daughter was wearing a moustache. 

Ivy was beautiful, the perfect Morticia to Harley’s Gomez. _ A little over the top _ . Ma took a hundred pictures before they left, and Ivy seemed to relax for a moment when Harley stuck a single rose between her teeth and dipped her in the kitchen.

Harley had lost the moustache by the time they arrived at Bruce’s, where music leaked heavy from the guest house. Another whole ass building attached to the mansion. Harley would never get used to Wayne Manor. 

“Is Alfred really just gonna stay in his room all night?”

Ivy smiled. “He’ll turn his TV up, break us up if we get too rowdy,”

Harley took her hand. “This is our party, okay? Our friends. This is going to be fun, alright?” 

“Yeah, I’m cool,”

Ivy was cool,  _ too cool _ . 

“Ya sure, pretty girl?”

“Harls,” Ivy pulled her in as she swung her keys into her purse. “I’m fine, I’ve got you,”

  
  


Selina and Bruce were The Blues Brothers,  _ always with the glasses, _ and though they looked good they did not look as good as Harley and Ivy. No one would ever look as good as Ivy did in that sleek black dress. Kate was there too, lounging across two seats and dressed in army gear. Ivy told her she was lazy.  _ But sexy,  _ Kate had replied. No one could argue with that. Then the girls had hugged it out in the corner for fifteen minutes, leaving Bruce and Harley to share a beer and pick the music. He had better taste than Ivy,  _ though you’ll never tell _ . 

“Remind me, Bruce, a beer an hour,” Harley had said to him as he gently handed her another vinyl to look at. “They’re all gonna be wasted before anyone gets here,”

“Alright, Quinzel,” he said with a wink. “But don’t blame me if you do fall of the wagon,” 

Falling off the wagon was the least of Harley’s worries, she was more worried about Ivy,  _ just gotta stay away from Johnny and his dust. _

Everyone began arriving half an hour later. First was Clark, Kara’s cousin, and Arthur and his girlfriend and Barry. They had bundled at Bruce like old friends and he had snarled and smirked, loving it. Then streams of people Harley half knew, then Dinah and Helena and Johnny and his weird friends, and before Harley knew it, the party was going, happening all around her on all fronts. Three beers in, but not three hours, she was buzzed and buzzing with Ivy curled around her. Everything was light and silly and only them, until the girls arrived.

Diana and Jess came first, slipping in quietly, only Ivy really noticing. Diana was dressed in tennis shorts and an oversized navy blue jumper; a short blonde wig adorned her head like a crown. Whatever Jessica had come as, Harley didn’t recognise her costume, _some sort of robot, maybe_. They were both cute and awkward, hugging Bruce and Selina as if they were friends, amongst the music and movement. Harley could feel it all, the beats and the bodies, and Ivy tense and annoyed.  _ Fun, supposed to be fun.  _ All Harley could do was pretend she hadn’t noticed her friends, her new girl’s old girl, and twirl Ivy into the next room. 

They danced there for a while instead, and Johnny joined them, his moves as bad as ever. His friends, the tall one and the short one, always huddling beside him awkwardly. Ed and Oz, he called them, as if the three nerds had wandered out of a metal band. They were normal for nerds, though, which made conversation easy. Words flying free between Ivy and Johnny, both past sober, conversation flowing the way Harley knew it would. About the kids that surrounded them, about politics and the environment. Harley enjoyed just listening, playing with Ivy’s fingers as she spoke when they had taken a perch in the corner. Ed watched her the whole time like he was anticipating the whole situation was gonna unravel into lesbian porn before him.  _ They’re just nice hands.  _ Harley knew she would have to get used to the looks, everyone at school would know by the end of the night, they couldn’t stay apart even if they wanted to. And Harley didn’t want to stay apart.  _ Maybe that’s one of the reasons Ivy didn’t want the party. _ A silly doubt, Harley reminded herself, when Ivy kissed her cheek mid conversation. Ed and Oz both looked like they were gonna faint or spunk; Johnny sent them to get beer. 

“I always knew you were secretly fun, Isley,”

“Is that so, darling?”  _ She really is a great Morticia. _

“Definitely but quietly fun, like me,” Johnny had come full Freddy Krueger, with a creepy mask he wasn’t wearing and a creepy glove he was. “Then you started hanging out with Harley, and boom, confirmation,”

_ Boom? _

“Am I cool then?” Harley asked. 

“Oh yeah, you like my knife,”

They all laughed, the room still alive around them. 

“She does like your knife,” Ivy replied. 

_ And usually the boy attached to it.  _ “Not as much as you though, babe,”

“Ew,” said Johnny slapping his leg. “So this is happening? Not just a party thing?”

Harley looked at Ivy and felt herself shrink, but like, in a nice way. 

“A real thing,” Ivy said.

Johnny leant in a little, his voice a little hushed. “And you ready for that, for these guys?”

“Fuck ‘em,” Ivy said with gusto. 

“Fair enough, fuck 'em all,”

Harley needed another beer to distract her,  _ to stop you climbing on top of her and kissing her right now.  _

“Is it true you got a homemade lab in your barn, Jonathan?” Ivy’s eyes were wide.

“Why? You wanna see it?”

For an hour after that, Harley lost them to biochem talk.  _ At least the boys brought beer back. _

Harley wasn’t sure when Kara and Zee arrived, but they did so as quietly as Diana and Jess had. For a while they hovered from boy to boy, from Helena and Dinah to Diana and Jess. No one, it seemed, paid them much attention until the first raised voices started.

Diana and Kara were arguing loudly, and whilst no one seemed to be able to make out what they were saying properly, everyone was watching anyhow. Selina wasn’t even being subtle about it, even sarcastically attempting to pull up a chair to watch until Ivy stopped her. Kara’s cousin was the only one to approach them, leaving the brunette he was talking to with rolled eyes. Both girls looked at him with disdain when he did, carrying on regardless of his presence, only a little quieter than before. 

And it went on for a while, their words getting no easier to focus on as Harley stared at them. Ivy and Selina chatting by her side, bored of the performance no matter how much they wanted to know what was being said. Clark ended it eventually though, whatever magic he had he waved, and rounded both girls back towards the bustle. He had a glint in his big eyes that made Harley nervous. 

“Alright, gather round, guys,” Clark announced walking into the centre of the room. Harley was definitely the only one still interested. “And turn that music down a bit, someone, anyone-,”

Bruce rolled his eyes but he turned it down slightly regardless.

“Not the bottle, Clark!"

“Truth of dare? Really?”

“I think there is some patching up to be done here; party games are perfect,” said Clark, shooting a cross armed Kara a smile.

“Nerd,” someone shouted, probably Bruce, maybe Vic, it was hard to tell.

“We play this every time,” yelled someone else. 

The decries amounted to very little in the end. Everyone in the room was either horny or drunk, some even both, so everyone gathered around crossed legged eventually. Kara still had a face about her but Selina was smiling. Everyone who had been refusing to talk for almost a year was now sitting looking at each other. Ivy wouldn’t join the ring but she stood behind Harley as she did. Harley knew one of them had to play,  _ someone will mention it, otherwise.  _

The first few rounds were boring. Diana kissed Clark, and Kara kissed Zee and Ollie dared Barry to flash his butt (which he did both hesitantly and ridiculously fast.) And things remained pretty boring until they were up - Bruce, Selina and Harley - no one else seemed to know how to raise the stakes. When Bruce chose dare, Selina made him kiss Clark too and the mood changed after that. Clark had grabbed Bruce’s face and left him speechless whilst everyone else cheered them on. Harley wasn’t sure if it her peers were actually happy or homophobic but the atmosphere change was needed.

“Hot,” Selina had whispered to her boyfriend afterwards, and Mera, and Zee, and Ed’s semi seemed to agree.

“Alright, Isley, you’re up,” 

“Nah, I’m not playing,” Ivy said as calm as ever, controlling her emotions in front of her audience. 

“Too scared?” Kara had bitten and for a moment Harley was worried that the music would halt and Ivy would launch. 

“Of you? Of any of you? Hardly,” 

“Then play,”

Ivy rolled her eyes, and came to the floor. “Fine, truth. Spin the bottle, Arlo,” 

So, Harley did, and when it landed on Hal, he wasted it. Everyone saw it coming.  _ Fuckin’ gross. _

“You giving it to the new girl?”

“Ew,”

“Honestly,”

Harley wasn’t even sure where the words were coming from.  _ You knew this would happen to night, you prepared for it. Panicking would just be embarrassing at this point, douchebag.  _ Everyone was looking at them now but Ivy never buckled.  _ Ivy is perfect.  _

“ _ Harley _ ,” Ivy said with emphasis. “If you’re gonna be a perv, at least say her name,”

“That’s a yes, then,” Harley sourced that one to Helena. 

Ivy put a hand on Harley’s shoulder and it was grounding. Selina was quick to move in on her turn, the cat like reflexes of a girl ready to save her friends.  _ Maybe Ivy was right about the party.  _

Selina had centred herself, up on her knees ready for whatever came her way.

“Truth or dare, Selina?” Clark asked as everyone watched her.

“Truth,” she said, and it was the greatest dare of the night. “Ask me anything,”

For a moment, silence filled the room except for the music. How many of these fucks have been waiting for this moment? Clark leant over to spin the bottle, to see who would be honoured with asking but then a voice. 

“What was it you got in trouble for, before you came?”

“Arthur-,” said Diana.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just curious, you know?”

The manboy stroked back his long hair and looked at his girlfriend, a girl with hair as red as Ivy’s. She gave him a stern and silent reply. 

Selina remained poised. “It’s fine, truth or dare, right? And we all know you came to this party to be nosey,” she looked across the room and her eyes met with Kara. ’ _I came for the booze_ ’, someone whispered in the background. “I was a thief, of course,”

People were laughing a little now. Even Harley. The way Selina kept people wrapped around her as she spoke was damn fucking masterful. “Although, I didn’t steal your Mama’s stuff, princess,” Selina turned to Diana as she spoke.

Diana smiled awkwardly, her eyes moving to Ivy for only a second. 

“Are you sure?” Zee asked, a genuine look of confusion on her face.

“Only one truth per round, it’s Harley’s turn,”

Harley couldn’t pick _ truth _ , not after that.  _ You just can’t.  _ What if they ask about _your_ past? The life you had before them? More questions about Ivy? Dare was a risk, too. Everyone just wanted to force each other make out. Teenagers were voyeurs almost exclusively, it seemed to Harley.  _ Less of a risk, though. _

“Dare, I guess,”

“Ooh, who you gonna kiss, little Harley?” Hollered Dinah.  _ See, predictable _ .

Ivy said nothing but Harley could feel she still feel her hand strong on her shoulder, as Selina gave her a ‘just get it over with a wink’.

The bottle was already spinning, over twenty sets of eyes staring in Harley directions once again, waiting for her fate to be revealed.  _ Too many of them.  _

Harley thought she might throw up,  _ the thickness of cheap fucking beer,  _ watching it spin, spin and spin.  _ Barry, Kate, even Selina. Someone who won’t make it weird, please. _ Damn Ivy and her damn eyes!  _ Why are we even playing? We’re not supposed to care what people think.  _

And then it stopped. 

_ Fuck _ .

_ Really,  _

Johnny smiled, swallowing his lips and mouthing a ‘sorry.’ Harley didn’t look at Ivy, she couldn’t, but Ivy gave her shoulder a subtle squeeze regardless. 

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

It was a quick kiss, easy, simple, over in a second, yet it still made Harley sick to her stomach. The room moved on quickly, another spin and another, as Harley fell back into the circle, eyes to floor. Ivy’s hand returned to her shoulder, gripping tighter the second time. _He isn’t him. He isn’t here._

After drinking games, and the opening of Johnny’s pockets, everyone at Wayne Manor was a mess. Harley, for once, was one of the sober ones.  _ Soberish.  _ Ivy, make-up smudged and drink in hand, was chattier than ever, her hands all over Harley all of the time. Harley felt alive from the attention. They danced until they hurt, with their friends and with their enemies, and it was good for a while. And even when it wasn’t good, it wasn’t them. 

A guy called Victor, who Harley had the pleasure of never meeting, almost fucked the whole night when he tried to feel up Zee whilst they were apple bobbing. Arthur had gone to the commotion, Clark and Bruce and Kate and Kara too, but Ivy had been the one to sort it. Victor had left with snarled teeth as soon as red flames had approached him in the kitchen area and backed him against a wall with only a glance. Zee had even thanked Ivy afterwards, and a drunk Ivy had given her a wink. It was so sexy, Harley kissed her in front of everyone and no one even noticed. 

Another highlight was Selina, who had cornered Harley on the way to the bathroom and they had gone together, one at the time, the other facing the wall as they continued their conversion. 

“You know, Harley,” Selina had said washing her hands and smiling at Harley in the mirror. “We both look hot as Hell in these suits,” 

“True,” Harley said. Though that far into the evening, they were both pretty dishevelled. 

Selina turned after drying her hands, and put her hands up on Harley’s shoulders. 

“Thank you for tonight,” she said. “Ivy is protective, stubborn, and I honestly don’t think she would have agreed to any of this bullshit without you here,”   
“Really?” Harley didn’t want to blush in front of Selina. 

“Oh yeah, our little flower is enamoured,” Selina said with a wiggle of her freckled nose. “And you’re good for her, right?”

“I hope so,”  _ I’ll try to be.  _

“I think so,” she replied, reaching up and pinching Harley’s cheek.  _ Patronising, yet endearing.  _

When they returned to the party, Ivy was waiting for them. She wrapped an arm around both of them and whispered 'next year, we're going as The Sanderson Sisters,'

  
  


Drunk Ivy was fun but she was touchy, clingy and a total fucking klutz. They had danced for another hour after the ruckus when Ivy fell into a table whilst holding Harley's drink. The glass went everywhere, including into Ivy's skin and everyone was too drunk to do anything but giggle. Harley was the only person even mildly concerned about the blood, not even Ivy, who was literally bleeding, seemed that bothered. As Harley dragged Ivy to the bathroom to clean up, Ivy dragged Harley towards a closet in the hall. 

"Ive, oh my god," 

"Look, come, we'll jus-,"

When Ivy pushed open the cupboard door, two pairs of eyes looked back at them, gaping and gasping mouths in their direction. Kate and Diana looked shocked, arms still wrapped around each other but maybe not as shocked as Ivy. 

“Shit, I-I thought I’d locked it,” Kate said.

“Sorry, we’ll just,-“ everyone was just staring - Ivy at Diana, Diana at Kate, Kate at Ivy — so Harley pulled the door shut as quickly as humanly possible. 

There was no giggling anymore. 

“Come on,” Harley said. “Let's go find somewhere else,”

They went out into the courtyard, where the stars looked upon them and cold air greeted them, and where Harley was glad for the peace. Where she led Ivy towards a bench holding her good hand, the music from the house now a dull bassline. 

“Gimme your other hand,” 

Ivy did as she was told, her eyes glassy and averted. “Sorry, this is embarrassing, drunk too much,”

“Its okay. I know you’re upset about everyone being here,” Harley did her best to put her own emotions in a bottle,  _ if only for this conversation.  _ “Sorry about Diana and Kate,”

“I’m not,” Ivy pouted as Harley began to clear up her cut with the edge of her undershirt.  _ Not as bad as it looks, thank God _ . “I don’t, ugh,  _ fuck, _ I don’t even care,”

“You do,”

“Not really,”

“Ivy-,”

They locked eyes for a moment, Harley feeling the most adult of the both of them for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” Ivy wasn’t crying but she wasn't  _ not  _ crying either. 

“It’s okay,” Harley said and was proud of herself for meaning it. “Life isn't exactly easy right now, and I would be upset too, even if I didn't care about my ex,”  _ that's true if anything is.  _

“I’m so sorry, this is so stupid, it’s not me,”

It was her,  _ still your Ivy,  _ just with half a bottle of vodka in her bloodstream. Harley had once spent three hours on acid stroking a bush she thought was a cat. _T_ _ h ings can always be worse.  _

“Red,” Harley said, touching Ivy's hair, touching her lips, touching the edge of the cut on her hand. “Red, red, red,” she lifted Ivy’s hand and kissed it as gently as she could.

“I think,” Ivy was looking at her, eyes burning when Harley took them in. They both took a deep breath. “Harley, I  _ like _ you, like a lot. And I’ve been thinking about stuff,”

“Stuff?”

“You’re, you’re my girlfriend, right?”

_ Fucking hope so.  _ Something in Harley’s chest fluttered and it made her jump.

“I was scared to ask, that it might be too much,” Harley said. 

“No, I want you to be my fucking girlfriend, and I want to kiss you so bad right now,”

“You’re drunk,” Harley couldn’t contain her grin. 

“Only a little,” Ivy said, coming closer. “Kiss me, if you want to be my girlfriend, fucking kiss me,”

Harley did, holding the fabric to Ivy’s cut still. laughing into the kiss. Ivy took the hand that wasn't bleeding and put it .

“I am, _I was_ , jealous earlier but not of Kate or-,” Ivy continued, their lips apart but foreheads together. “I know it was only a silly game but I don’t, I don’t want to see you kissing someone else,”

“Is it bad that, like, I want you to be a little possessive?” A _ s you are when you remember the picture of Diana in Ivy’s room. _

“No,” Ivy said, pausing for a moment. “Maybe, I don’t know, it’s not  _ bad, _ ” she ended where it felt as if there should have been a ‘but’.

“Just nice to know that I’m yours,”  _ breathe. _

“I don’t own you, Harley,” 

“That’s not, I didn’t actu-“  _ How did you fuck this up?  _

Ivy brought her bad hand up to Harley’s cheek as well. “Harls, look, okay, I don’t want you to kiss other people, I want to be the only one that kisses you,’ and she did, quickly. “But if one day you want to, to kiss someone else, then that’s  _ my _ loss,”

_ Would she- _ “Would you say that to someone else? Or just because it’s me?”  _ Which would be better?  _

“What you told me about last year, it’s not okay what happened to you. You have to know you’re safe here, safe with me,”

Harley squeezed Ivy tight. 

“It’s not okay with your parents, either. That you have to see it,”

Ivy sighed. “I know, I know. That’s why I wanna talk about this shit. To not be like them,” she hiccupped. “And maybe I’m still a little drunk,” and hiccupped. “And sappy,” and hiccupped.

“Definitely,” Harley replied. “Wanna go cuddle in bed?”  _ Now that's sappy.  _

“Fuck yes,” Ivy said pulling away. “But I should tell you some- don’t freak out - it’s fine,” Harley took a deep breath as Ivy continued. “My mom, she wants to meet you, like properly,”

“She, she does?” 

“We had a conversa-,”

“Hey, shit, sorry,”

Harley almost screamed. 

When two figures appeared in the doorway, the two from the closet -  _ ironic _ \- Harley knew it was karma. _The interrupters become the interrupted._ Kate held the door open for Diana but she didn’t enter. Instead she shared a look and a mutual salute with Ivy, _ some strange redhead telepathy _ , before she threw Harley a smile and snuck back into the shadows. Diana approached them alone and nervous. 

“Hey, guys,” she said, her blonde wig barely sitting on her head anymore. “Could we talk?”

“Sure,” said Harley.

“Why?” asked Ivy at exactly the same time. 

“Look, I don’t think I can live with things being weird between us,” she was addressing Ivy. “Not if you’re dating my friend an-,”

“And you're making out with mine?”

_ This is the most you’ve ever seen them interact like people.  _

“What? No, it’s just a party, Pam. Kate and I were having fun,” 

_ Do you let them just keep going?  _

“What do you want from us, Diana? We were about to ditch this whole thing,”  _ and crawl into a bed Alfred had made fresh especially for you.  _

“I want to apologise,”

“I don’t want to hear it,”

“Ive, let her speak,” Harley was worried Ivy would see it as a betrayal but instead Ivy took her hand again. She took Harley’s hand and trusted her  _ because she is your girlfriend. All she had wanted was Diana’s support. _

“Well, go on then,” Ivy said. 

“I’m sorry about, about everything that happened last year,” Diana’s lip quivered as she spoke.

“It’s Selina you should apologise to,” 

Diana huffed. “I did earlier, before she even told her story,”  _ that would explain the arguments with Kara. _ “But I wasn’t- Selina and I weren’t close, it’s not the same. I fucked you over and I’m sorry, Ivy,”

_ Should you even be here? _

“Okay,” Ivy replied, and it really was a better response than Harley had expected. They all stood silently beneath the stars, no one ready to say anything for a while. 

"Is that all?" Ivy continued.

Diana cracked eventually. “I think you two are good for each other,” 

Harley smiled, and leant up to hug her friend. “Thanks, babe. We totally are,”  _ sorry for your loss. _ “And thank you, for all this,” Harley did mean that, she truly really actually did. 

“Can we go now?” Ivy asked, like a bored child. She was too drunk and emotional for any of it, Harley could see how much she needed out. 

“Yeah,” said Harley. “We’ll see you around, Lady Di,” 

Harley kind of liked being the sober one, which in itself made the night a big one. Ivy hadn’t let her go since they arrived in the bedroom she had claimed; arms bound around Harley’s waist from behind and head cradled into her neck. Being held was nice, being unabashedly wanted was exhilarating. Between words, Ivy lay kisses to the back of Harley’s neck with a booze dipped to tongue. 

“I’m sorry you had to kiss a boy,”

Harley laughed. “Kissed worse,”  _ and they aren’t all him. You have to remember that Johnny isn’t him. Ivy isn't him.  _

“Last boy I kissed was Bruce, long time ago” Ivy giggled. “Wow, maybe I am drunk,”

“You are,”  _ and I’m not scared. I am safe.  _ “Tell me about ya mom,”

Ivy didn’t say anything for a while, she just held Harley and rolled in as close as physically possible. 

“Think she wants to leave him but,” she drifted off.

Harley finished for her girlfriend. _I_ _ t's your truth too.  _ “But she can’t?"

“Not even when he fucks off to a another state and leaves us for months. It’s like, she’s a different person or something,”

“Yeah, it can feel like that,”

Ivy kissed her cheek. “Sorry, Arlo,”

“S’fine,”

“Sure you can have dinner with her? I told her that you’re my girlfriend before I even asked you, that I don’t even care if she tells dad, if it embarrasses them. I told her I didn’t care about your past and - and that I wouldn’t let them make me hide it, like with Diana,”

“Wait,” Harley turned to look at Ivy. “They made you hide it?”

“Basically,”

That stung a little.

“Dinner with my girlfriend and her mom sounds great,”  _ well not ‘great’ but you’ll do it.  _ Harley would bite her tongue and pull up her boots and be the most impressive rehab reprobate Mother Isley ever met. 

  
  
  
  



End file.
